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CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WORLD WAR 



CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
IN THE WORLD WAR 



BY 

W. DOUGLAS MACKENZIE 

•I 

PRESIDENT OF HARTFORD SEMINARY FOUNDATION 




ASSOCIATION PRESS 

Nbw York: 347 Madison Avenub 
1918 



j> s 5^ 



Copyright, 191 8, by 

The International Committee of 

Young Men's Christian Associations 



OCT -4 1918 

S> Cf. A 5 3 7 1 5 



DEDICATED 

TO 

My Former and Present Pupils 

Who Having Heard 

the Call of Their Country and the Master 

of Us All 

Have Given Themselves to Varied Forms of Service 

IN 

the World War 



PREFACE 

The aim of this book is described in the intro- 
ductory chapter. The subject has been partially 
treated in many books, pamphlets, and articles 
since August, 1914. But there is good reason 
why it should be discussed as a whole, a chapter 
in Christian Ethics. For the department of 
Christian teaching which is known as Ethics always 
contains some pages devoted to the State and the 
Church, and also to the place of war in the life 
of man. These three topics are drawn together 
in these pages. Each of them has been the sub- 
ject of whole volumes. I have had to cut a straight 
path through the forest, avoiding important aspects 
of each, and all technical matters; concentrating 
directly on the main problems which disturb the 
Christian conscience as it struggles to live in a 
darkened world. 

As the substance of this book was given in the 

form of lectures to students in Christian Ethics, 

I have ventured to retain the occasional use of 

the first personal pronoun. 

W. D. M. 



vu 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface vii 

Chapter I 
INTRODUCTORY 

1. Correct statement of the ethical problem 3 

2. Perplexity and Pacifism 5 

3. The facts to be investigated 12 

Chapter II 
THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 

1. Definition of a State 17 

2. The State a divine institution 20 

3. The State and physical force 22 

4. The State and the individual 26 

5. The individual and the State 27 

6. The influence of religion 28 

7. International life and morality 30 

8. Forms of the State 33 

9. The vision of a universal State 34 

Chapter III 
THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL, AND WAR 

1. Aggressive war and Christian morality 39 

2. The moral obligation of an invaded nation. ... 41 

3. Belgium as the supreme illustration 45 

4. Sacrifice and force 47 

ix 



x CONTENTS 

Chapter IV 

THE GERMAN MILITARIST DOCTRINE OF THE 

STATE 

PAGE 

i. "The will to power" 53 

2. The good of the people 56 

3. Efficiency and defects 58 

4. The formation of German character 59 

5. Relation of German nation to other nations. . . 61 

6. The resulting doctrine of war 66 

7. Criticism 69 

Chapter V 
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 

1. The founding of the Church 75 

2. Definition of the Church 77 

3. The Church and the State 79 

4. Christ and the State . , 80 

5. The Sermon on the Mount 86 

6. Can a State imitate the sacrifice of Christ?. ... 94 

7. The teaching of the Apostle Paul 96 

8. The ethics of the Church and of the State. . . . 100 

9. War and the doctrine of love 103 

10. Can we pray for the Germans? 108 

11. Summary of argument 112 

Chapter VI 
ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WORLD WAR 

A. The Aims and Methods of Germany 

1. Germany began the war 119 

2. German policy 1 24 

3. German preparation 125 



CONTENTS xi 



PAGE 



4. German methods of warfare 128 

a. World-wide treachery 

b. War is between nations, therefore ruthless 

c. Evacuation of conquered territories 

5. German use of treaties 139 

6. German practice based on theory 140 

7. Is all Germany guilty? 141 

Chapter VII 
ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WORLD WAR 
B. The Aims and Spirit of the Entente and 
the United States of America 

1. Correct and incorrect forms of stating the 

question 145 

2. Moral value of the conduct of the Allies on 

entering the war 147 

3. Policy of President Wilson 151 

4. The declaration of war by the United States.. . 155 

5. The duty of America 156 

Chapter VIII 
ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 

1. From study of the moral standing of the belliger- 

ents 161 

2. From the moralizing of war 164 

3. From the defence of democracy 167 

4. The moral standards of the soldiers 172 

5. The birth of a universal State 174 

6. Industrial and social reconstruction 177 

7. Enthusiasm for personal service 180 

8. The victory of the Sermon on the Mount. . . . 185 

Index 191 



INTRODUCTORY 



"No natural instinct, nothing less than a moral 
obligation, can be an excuse for risking the lives 
of our citizens, for threatening the lives of other 



men." 



•Frederick Denison Maurice. 



CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTORY 

As no war has ever been so extensive as this 
one, it is no less true that never before have so 
many men and women inquired with agony of 
soul into the origin and meaning of war. The 
numbers and the agony are beyond our ken. So 
much has been already gained since August, 1914. 
For we may perhaps dare to assume that when 
a sufficient number of human beings have pursued 
the inquiry deep enough, with grief and moral 
indignation, wars will cease. 

1. We must make clear to ourselves the correct 
form in which we are to put the question. At 
the outset we shall refuse to consider it in this 
form, "Is war right or wrong ?" Later in the 
discussion we shall have to cite the opinion of 
those who say that war is necessary for the best 
development of human nature, and that it is the 
highest duty of every nation that would be strong 
and great to be ever perfecting itself in the art 
of war. Here we must point out that the ques- 
tion is infected with what we may call the disease 
of abstraction. Against that infection students of 

3 



4 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

Ethics must be continually warned. The word 
"war" is evidently used to cover a vast multitude 
of individual wars, and to include both sides in 
any one war. Those who answer, "War is right," 
are reasoning, as logicians would say, from the 
particular to the universal. Because some wars 
in some ages, and under some circumstances, have 
produced good results, therefore war is right. 
That is not convincing. The other party, who 
answer, "War is wrong," begin with the universal 
proposition that all war springs from passion and 
sin, and always involves the killing of men, and 
conclude that no nation has any right under any 
circumstances to engage in war. It is the purpose 
of these pages to prove that both methods of argu- 
ment are logically fallacious and the conclusion in 
both cases is false. 

Nor can we be satisfied with the exact form into 
which Sir Gilbert Murray has thrown the question: 
"How can war ever be right ?" * For it is clear that 
in any case with which we can be practically con- 
cerned, war must be always wrong on at least one 
side. Both sides may indeed be guilty, equally 
guilty, of the immeasurable crime, but there may 
be cases where one side is free from blame in the 
eyes of posterity and of God. If one side made the 
contest inevitable by unjust demands, if it refused 
the last, desperate offer of reconciliation without 

1 "Faith, War, and Policy." By Sir Gilbert Murray. 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

bloodshed, issued the aggressive ultimatum, fired 
the first shot, that one is guilty; and for it that 
war, whatever its issue may be, can never "be 
right." But what of the other side? Can that 
war be a right war for it? That is the real ques- 
tion with which we are practically concerned. For 
there are those who maintain that there are no 
conceivable circumstances under which a nation 
has the right to engage in war. The government 
of a people ought indeed to maintain just and 
honorable relations with all others, and if its rights 
are invaded, it ought to protest, it ought to use 
all the powers of moral suasion which can be dis- 
covered, but it ought never to fight. The real 
question which confronts the modern man, there- 
fore, when it is expressed carefully and clearly, 
is this: "Are there any circumstances in which 
it is the moral and religious duty of a government 
to engage in war?" That puts the matter in its 
final form, as a problem in Christian Ethics, and 
that is the question which it is proposed to dis- 
cuss in the following pages as frankly and yet as 
briefly as possible. 

2. There are three classes of people for whom 
the discussion is mainly intended. First, there 
is that very large class who look upon war, especially 
this war in all its monstrous extent and horror, 
with spiritual dismay. They feel rather than see 
that the purely pacifist attitude contains some 



6 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

error, but they cannot name it. They are confused 
by the contrast between the vast fields of carnage 
and destruction, and the spirit of peace and love 
which they identify rightly with the name of Christ. 
And yet they cannot bring themselves to believe 
and to say with the courage born of reasoned con- 
viction that America was wrong to enter the fray. 
They feel that she was right, and yet feel also as 
if it were a sin to say so, a sin against that spirit 
of peace and love. 

In the next place there are those soldiers, born 
and bred to lives of industry and honor, whose 
very breath was to live and let live, rather to help 
all others to live nobly and righteously and happily. 
Now they are suddenly caught into a career where 
they are to share in the dreadful work of killing 
their fellowmen. Many of these noble young men 
have been driven almost to madness on the field 
of battle by the crushing hideous facts before them, 
the heaps of slain, the stream of wounded carried 
in all degrees of shatteredness and pain, to suffer 
on beds of torture, perhaps to go through the long 
years of a life that promised sunshine and freedom 
and health, maimed, or halt, or blind — or mad. 
How can this be the will of God? That is the 
bitter cry of many a brave and confident soldier 
as he returns to billets, with a heart bruised and 
sick, wounded more deeply than he of the shat- 
tered frame. 



INTRODUCTORY 7 

In the third place there are those who occupy 
the position of reasoned pacifism. Several Chris- 
tian sects have arisen which hold that it is wrong 
to make war, in the sense that it can never be 
right in any conceivable circumstances for a govern- 
ment to come to its citizens and order them to fight 
against an enemy. The Society of Friends, pop- 
ularly known as the Quakers, is the leading ex- 
ponent of this view. The movement began in 
England in the seventeenth century, though it 
had been variously prepared for in the course of 
the sixteenth century. It has had a most honor- 
able history. Its members have been distinguished 
alike for piety and a noble philanthropy. William 
Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, John Howard, 
the prison reformer, Wilberforce, the triumphant 
worker for the liberation of slaves throughout the 
British Empire, are among its many illustrious 
names. The Government of the United States has 
done honor to the history and influence of the 
Quakers by exempting from direct military service 
members of that Society who adhere to its tra- 
ditional interpretation of the meaning of war and 
of their relation to it as followers of Christ. 

What is that interpretation? It can be better 
understood if we remember that it was preached 
with great success at a period when war was ac- 
cepted almost as a normal condition of national 
life. All nations in Europe had their ambitions 



8 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

for self-aggrandizement, their hereditary monarchies, 
whose dynastic interests were matters of national 
concern and defence, and consequently their pro- 
fessional soldiers, ready and eager always for the 
fray. Many earnest men and women saw and felt 
that this was wrong. They contrasted the situa- 
tion with the spirit of the New Testament, and 
asked how professedly Christian nations could 
maintain the habit of warfare, in this deliberate 
manner. Further, these devoted souls endeavored 
to apply literally the specific words of Jesus Christ 
to their daily conduct. They refused to take 
oaths in court because He said, "Swear not at all." 
They refused to give each other titles, even to 
address anyone as "Mister," because Jesus said, 
"Call no man Master." In the same spirit they 
understood the command which Jesus quoted from 
the Old Testament and deepened, "Thou shalt 
not kill." They so understood the words, "Resist 
not evil," and asserted that no one could obey the 
great and glorious law, "Love your enemies," and 
engage in any war for any cause. 

These men were not cowards. It is foolish to say 
that all pacifists are "yellow," have no red blood 
in their veins, and are taking refuge in a religious 
plea to shelter a craven spirit under sacred words. 
Many of these Quakers of the seventeenth cen- 
tury were very brave, heroically enduring all manner 
of persecution and physical suffering rather than 



INTRODUCTORY 9 

do what they believed to be wrong. And many of 
their representatives today are as noble of spirit 
as they. 

In recent times the pacifist position has been 
maintained by arguments which are drawn not 
from Scripture, but from a certain philosophy of 
human nature. Man is not primarily prone to 
evil, but to good, it is said. He will not resist the 
appeal to the generosity, the humanity, that is 
latent in him. If you trust a man, he will respond 
to your trust. If you refuse to resist his physical 
attack, he will be ashamed and withhold the hand 
that was raised to strike. In the long run, it is 
urged, though not in every individual case, the 
refusal to fight will result in the greater good. 
It is an extension of this argument when philosophi- 
cal anarchists hold that the root of all social dis- 
order is to be found in the use of physical force 
by the governments of the world. The use of 
force, it is said, calls out and encourages the evil 
in man. Remove that incubus from the history 
of society, and the inherent goodness of human 
nature will spring to light. Men will be honest 
if you do not force them to it. Men will be pitiful 
if all men desist from revenge or physical retaliation. 

This line of thought has gradually allied itself 
with the religious position described above, in a 
very interesting and subtle way. Assuming that 
human history is under the guidance of God and 



io CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

that in all men there is a spark of the divine, the 
true attitude of every reverent soul is to leave the 
governance of the race to the persuasive, all-per- 
vasive Spirit of God. He who resists evil takes 
the scepter out of the hands of God. He smites 
his fellowman for a wrong done, while punish- 
ment ought to be left with Him who alone dispenses 
justice with unerring wisdom and absolute sym- 
pathy. Moreover, the supreme rule of God over 
man is through the appeal of perfect love. It is 
not the divine terror but the divine mercy that 
is the source of salvation and hope. Rather than 
resist evil with physical force Jesus died on the 
cross, and from that sublime act of self-devotion 
the fountain of life has sprung for all the race of 
men. He had faith in the power of sacrificial love 
to win the victory, and history is slowly but surely 
justifying His confidence. 

From these facts, and facts they are, the con- 
clusion is drawn that all men who follow Christ 
ought to make the same appeal to human nature. 
In the long run it will respond. Love will prove 
itself omnipotent. The most selfish and most cruel 
fiends will at last give way before the irresistible 
appeal of innocence that remains meek, and loving- 
kindness that refuses all resistance or revenge. 
If any one nation would wholly disarm and pursue 
no policy but that of purest honor, no other nation 
would dare to attack it. Its courageous helplessness 



INTRODUCTORY n 

would disarm its foes. But since no government 
has yet been found Christian enough to accept this 
as its law of life and rather die as a government 
than fight an assaulting foe, there is nothing left 
for individual followers of Christ, and the com- 
munities which they compose, but to refuse obedi- 
ence to any government which would enlist them 
in even a defensive war against the most indefensible 
and wicked assault by another people. 

The argument of reasoned pacifism might be 
elaborated, but these are its fundamental positions, 
and I have tried to put them as fairly and sym- 
pathetically as I can. I hope it may not be too 
personal a matter, but may help the reader himself, 
if I say that I who write at one time occupied this 
position. In boyhood I was brought directly and 
indirectly under powerful and gracious Quaker 
influence. In young manhood I gave much thought 
to the problem of Peace and War, and was proud 
to have some of my public statements reproduced, 
with compliments that a young man welcomes, 
in The Herald of Peace, of London, England. As 
I look back I can remember that, strange to say, 
the first stirrings of doubt arose when I was read- 
ing Tolstoi. His sheer individualism in religion, 
his arbitrary and wayward dealing with the New 
Testament and even with the teaching of Him 
whom he accepted as his supreme Authority and 
Master, led me at last through other lines of thought 



12 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

to see that the argument outlined above, persuasive 
and pious as it is, rests upon foundations that are 
too narrow to carry the weight of the worlds life. 
Gradually it became clear that the following funda- 
mental matters must be reconsidered. 

3. First, war must be considered as a function 
of national government. The ordinary puzzle put 
to pacifists, "What would you do if a man assaulted 
you?" is irrelevant. Even the further question, 
"What would you do to a man who tried to murder 
your wife?" does not present an exact parallel, but 
only a partial illustration of what is meant by war. 
War is a national act; and its moral significance 
can be studied only by investigating what we 
mean by the State, what its nature and functions 
are, and what those duties are which rest upon the 
individual as the citizen of a definite country, 
ruled by a definite government. 

Second, the Christian man is not by his con- 
version separated at once from all secular relations 
and obligations. He remains a member of a family, 
perhaps a family of unbelievers. He remains the 
citizen of a country, where he lives and whose 
government both protects him and exacts from 
him certain duties, even although it be not a pro- 
fessedly Christian government. 

Third, the Christian man is a member of the 
specific organization or community called the 
Church. From the beginning, from the hour when 



INTRODUCTORY 13 

Jesus deliberately founded and taught and ruled 
this community in His own lifetime on earth, on, 
through its fuller establishment after His death 
and resurrection, into its rich and multiform his- 
tory in the world, it has found itself related to the 
State in many intricate ways. The one institution 
has acted upon the other continuously. At times 
they have seemed to be rivals. One has sought 
to subdue and absorb the other. At the best they 
have been but imperfect coadjutors in the great 
task of perfecting the conditions and the character 
of human history. Today, in most countries of 
the world, they are recognized as separate, com- 
plementary institutions, each having its own sphere 
of influence, its characteristic work to do. 

The problem of war which we are discussing in 
these pages can only be solved, if solved at all, by 
means of a careful consideration of these two su- 
preme institutions in human life. What is the 
meaning (or telos) of each? How does each stand 
related to the will of God? How does the spirit 
of the one affect the spirit of the other? What 
does each do for the individual, and what shall 
the individual do for each ? These are some of the 
questions which we must investigate if we are to 
have any chance of answering the main inquiry 
which we have set before us. 



THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 



CHAPTER II 

THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 

I. When we speak or sing of "my country," 
we are thinking primarily of the territory or region 
where we and the nation to which we belong are 
established. It is our "fatherland. " Its "templed 
hills" and valleys are in our mind, and all peoples 
speak with thrilling love of the scenes where their 
fathers died and their own life is spent. When we 
speak of the "nation," it is the inhabitants whom 
we have in view. We picture all the classes which 
compose it, from the highest to the lowest, the 
rulers and the ruled, the rich and the poor, the 
dweller in the city and the laborer on the farm, 
the men and women, parents and children, home 
and friendly circle. They compose the nation. 
When we speak of the "government," our eye is 
upon those on whom authority rests for the order- 
ing of the life of the nation, the protection of the 
land from invasion. When we speak of the "State," 
we summarize all these in a conception which in- 
cludes them all. The State is the name we give 
to a mass of human beings occupying a definite 
territory, among whom there is an ordered life 

17 



18 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

resting on a certain form of government, and who 
stand in recognized relations with other similar 
masses of human beings, occupying their own terri- 
tory and exercising sovereignty over their own 
life. When each State is looked at in relation to 
the one life of its whole people and in relation to 
the life of other States, it takes the form of an 
idealized individual. It is looked upon as having 
a character of its own, interests of its own, a will 
of its own. Hence there has grown up in the process 
of time even a system of law known as "inter- 
national law," which seeks to determine the moral 
conditions under which States may act toward 
one another. This system seeks to guide and 
restrain the conduct of nations as if they were 
individuals capable of distinguishing between right 
and wrong, responsible for their actions towards 
one another, liable to reproof and correction for 
wrongdoing. 

The State has existed from the beginnings of 
human history, and has assumed innumerable 
forms. Its changes can be traced through the 
patriarchal to the tribal form. The growth of the 
independent and rival Greek cities led to the identi- 
fication of the State with the individual city, in 
which all the freemen had an equal voice in the 
making of laws, bearing the burden and directing 
the external policy of the community. The rise 
in modern times of nations, which comprised cities 



THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 19 

and rural populations, created the more extended 
forms of monarchical and republican government. 
The combination of republican and monarchical 
ideals gave rise to what are known as limited or 
constitutional monarchies. The sway of one ruler 
or one centralized government over peoples who 
had enjoyed an independent national life gave 
rise to the fact, and the theory, of the Empire. 
All these classes of state organization have existed 
in forms too numerous to be named or described 
in these pages. 

That which stands out as an indubitable fact is 
that some kind of State, some measure and form 
of centralized government, is essential to the well- 
being and the moral development of mankind. 
Even if men were sinless, agreements would have 
to be reached, arrangements formally made and 
publicly announced, operations would have to be 
directed, from a central authority for the organ- 
ization of the activities of men in their united 
concerns. The alternative to state government 
is not freedom, but chaos. 

When we remember that man is inherently self- 
seeking, that this gives rise as a well-observed 
fact to universal selfishness, with all its results in 
vice, cruelty, deceit, greed, and their miserable 
consequences, we see that a central authority, 
which means a recognized tribunal of justice, 
the execution of penalties upon wrong-doing, is 



20 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

absolutely essential. Only so can order of the 
most primitive character be established and those 
conditions secured in which the moral progress 
as well as the physical well-being of man can be 
made possible. Hegel, in an interesting passage, 
has used the illustration of a house. As wind and 
fire and water are used to build the house, whose 
object is to defend the dwellers in it against these 
natural forces, so the State is erected out of the 
passions and desires of the individual to defend 
the nation against them. Undisciplined, they are 
destructive of the nation; coordinated and con- 
trolled by law and force, they contribute to its 
richer life. 1 

"The principle of the State is the idea of Right. 
This does not mean that the State is the sole admin- 
istrator of justice on earth; justice has also a place 
in the family and its discipline, in the Church, and 
in the life of the individual* But it administers 
public right, and has to express it by means of 
compulsion and with the certainty of a national 
force." 2 

2. From the very beginnings of history the 
existence and authority of the State have been 
connected with the religious faith and life of every 
people. All kingly prerogatives have been traced 
to the will of the god whom the tribe or the nation 

1 Hegel, "Philosophy of History." Trans, by Sibree, pp. 28, 29. 

2 Dorner, "Christian Ethics." Trans., p. 558. 



THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 21 

worshiped. It is natural that in the course of 
thought upon the subject it should become clear 
that much superstition was mixed up with this 
idea. Low ideas and primitive ideas of man and 
of his relations to the Creator and Lord of his life 
must color his conception of the State and its 
function. But this does not lead inevitably to 
the conclusion that the will of God has no relation 
to the existence and work of the State. It is true, 
we cannot hold that the chief of his tribe is in 
direct communication with the divine, from whom 
he receives immediate revelations of his duty and 
of the coming fortunes of his people. Nor can we 
fail to see defects in the view held by ancient Israel 
concerning the nature of the theocracy under which 
the noble leaders and inspired prophets of that 
race strove to guide the destinies and mould the 
character of that people. The view that God 
Himself announced in a supernatural way all the 
explicit and detailed laws of a nation cannot be 
maintained. But this by no means implies that 
the State exists outside the will of God, nor that 
the will of God has no relation to the development 
of its political and legal system. 3 

It must be insisted that any principle of con- 

8 The State as a Divine Institution: "The State is neither a 
divine creation of God nor something that is wholly secular; but 
it is a human product resting on a divine basis, and thus has both 
a divine and a human side." Dorner, "Christian Ethics." Trans., 
P- 555- 



22 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

duct which springs from the nature of man and 
of that world in which he lives is essentially divine. 
It is an ordinance of God. The working out of 
that principle is indeed largely in the power of 
man. It is the very law of his nature that he can 
do what he ought to do and become what he ought 
to be only by discovering the needs of action and 
the ideals of character, by the exercise of his mind, 
by response to his inherent instincts and impulses 
and appetites. But it is also a law of his nature 
that the discovery of his ideals, the control and 
right use of his instincts and appetites, the develop- 
ment of his character, have never been possible 
without some vision of the divine law and the 
consciousness of relation to the divine will. 

3. The State exists as the organization of a people, 
for the promotion of their entire well-being. Its 
form may change, but the end must always be 
the same. When this aim is lost sight of and the 
well-being of a dynasty or a regnant class is pro- 
moted at the cost of the community as a whole, 
the rulers will in course of time be overthrown 
and either new men take their place, and do better 
or worse, or the very form of government may be 
changed in hope of a worthier result for the mass 
of the people. Tyranny exercised by an autocracy, 
or corrupt government conducted by a representative 
legislature and executive, always interfere with that 
"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" which 



THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 23 

are the fundamental rights of the people as a whole. 
The extent of that interference, when we take 
account also of the intelligence and virility of the 
nation, determines the hour of a revolution. At 
some point the intolerable limit is reached, and the 
seats of the mighty are cast down. History abun- 
dantly proves that such changes, whether violent 
or gradual and orderly, arise from the judgment 
of the people, from the working of their deep, in- 
stinctive demand for justice, freedom, and peace, 
that they may enjoy the fruits of their labor and 
secure the ideals of happiness which they cherish. 

The State, then, must exist for the good of the 
individual and the mass of individuals which com- 
pose it. These must be protected against one an- 
other and against their enemies from without. 
Laws are made and executed, not to destroy, but 
to establish the freedom and selfhood of the citizen. 
Right laws are not restrictive, except upon selfish- 
ness and criminal intent. They are intended either 
to forbid wrongdoing or to lay down the rules, 
mark out the relations, which will enable all the 
citizens most fully to develop their individual 
powers and attain their lawful ambitions. 

Now the fact that men are selfish and so many 
are vicious makes it necessary for the State to 
use physical force to secure the ends for which it 
exists. In an immoral world it is the moral duty 
of the State to use force. It is basic to all other 



24 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

functions of government, is named in every law 
where penalties are defined, is visible to the public 
in every policeman, and in fact pervades the entire 
civilized order in which we live. Without it there 
would be chaos. 4 

The people who revolt against the use of force 
and wish to establish a social arrangement without 
it, yet live by it even in the making of their plea. 
The anarchist who would destroy physical-force- 
government by dynamite, carries his dynamite in 
a taxicab under police laws which save his life in 
the doing of it. For it is the policeman at the 
street corner who prevents a collision of his taxicab 
that would blow the anarchist to pieces. "My right 
to walk along the high road involves an obligation 
upon all other persons not to obstruct me, and 
in the last resort the State will send horse, foot, 
and artillery rather than let me be causelessly 
obstructed in walking along the high road." 5 

It is true that we are learning to use more than 
force, whether by fine or imprisonment, or by 
capital punishment. Our social workers and re- 
ligious prison reformers are rightly insisting that 
more can be done for society than merely inflict- 
ing physical punishment on lawbreakers. But 
it is clear that when the utmost is done for prisoners, 



* See Bluntschli's admirable brief chapter on "The Theory of 
Force," in "The Theory of the State," pp. 242, 243. 
8 B. Bosanquet, "The Philosophical Theory of the State," p. 209. 



THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 25 

they are yet prisoners; and it is only on the basis 
of their liability to punishment that moral influences 
can be brought to bear upon them successfully. 
Again it is true that "the place of actual fear of 
punishment in maintaining the social system is 
really very small, while the place of a habituation, 
which is essentially ethical, is comparatively large." 6 
But this habituation to the laws and customs of 
the State and of society is made possible by the 
physical force which underlies the entire social 
order. A man lives freely and healthily when he 
has formed and obeyed such rules of living as 
produce health and freedom, and he may even 
"forget that he has a stomach." But dyspeptic 
penalties are part of the system of life, elements 
in the physical basis on which his conduct rests, 
and the penalties will be inflicted if he breaks his 
good habits. So it is with the mass of citizens. 
They obey the law as a rule without thought of 
penalties. In fact there are only three occasions 
in a well-ordered community when the physical 
force of the State is directly considered, namely, 
when a law with penalties is promulgated, when a 
criminal is punished, when a citizen or a group 
are tempted by greed or passion or ambition delib- 
erately to transgress a known law. But even for 
a law-abiding community, law and penalty are 



6 Ibid., pp. 290, 291. 



26 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

ever-present as the, as it were, "subconscious" 
bases of life. 

4. Of course history has revealed the fact that 
there are intricate and baffling problems involved 
in the relation of the State to the individual citi- 
zen. What are the limits of the State's respon- 
sibility? How far can it rightly and healthily go 
in the restraint of individual impulse? This is a 
perplexing question, and is under constant dis- 
cussion, alike among students of political science, 
legislators, and thoughtful citizens. Theoretically 
the State claims the whole life of the individual for 
the good of the community. But the State, being 
human, has not perfect knowledge, and therefore 
has not perfect authority. Moreover, there are 
sacred depths in the life of a personal being into 
which no fellowman can enter, and there are indi- 
vidual rights which no one can surrender without 
the loss of manhood itself. The fight for freedom 
of thought in religious matters is one example, the 
most influential of all, of the fact that there are 
regions of personal life with which the State cannot 
safely deal. We recognize that if the very liberty 
and happiness, for whose preservation the State 
exists, are to be cherished, a limit to its control 
of the individual must be established. Beyond 
that point, the State would create slavery if it 
interfered with the natural action of the individual 
personality. 



THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 27 

This fact has been recognized by the action of 
the United States Government in granting exemp- 
tion from active military service to those who at 
the time of the declaration of war in April, 191 7, 
were members of certain religious communities, 
which have been for centuries committed to the 
pacifist position. In a way the Government could 
take no other attitude. For these communities 
came from Europe because they were persecuted 
for holding pacifist and other unpopular doctrines. 
The fact that they have been accepted and classed 
among the citizenry of this country gives them that 
claim to special treatment which has been acknowl- 
edged and honored. But even there the Govern- 
ment has drawn a line. It reserves the right to 
conscript pacifist citizens for those forms of service 
in connection with the war which serve to heal the 
wounds it has made and to restore what it has 
destroyed. In all this the State is striving both 
to honor that in the individual life which ought 
to lie beyond its province, and yet to insist on the 
full measure of that personal service which every 
citizen owes to the whole nation. 

5. What are the responsibilities of the individual 
towards the State? Under the latter he has re- 
ceived his birth, education, health, and all the 
conditions for the making and enjoying of his 
livelihood. Under its protection he has established 
his family and pursues the higher aims of culture 



28 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

and religion. In return he owes, first, obedience to 
the laws and regulations of the community from 
which he derives his earthly life and its conditions. 
Further, he owes to the State his own cordial sup- 
port and assistance in the performance of its vital 
functions. To the modern world it has become 
clear that no State can prosper whose individual 
members do not cherish a sincere loyalty and 
render constant and intelligent assistance. The 
more intelligent the citizens become, the more 
wide is their interest in all the concerns of the 
nation to which they belong. The more they value 
what they have received from it, the more they are 
determined to render what service they can in 
preserving and conveying to succeeding genera- 
tions the institutions from which such blessings 
have flowed to themselves. But the individual has 
something no less essential than obedience and 
support to contribute. If he be a man of high 
moral ideals, and still more if he be of high religious 
aspiration, he is able to contribute to the national 
life something which is absolutely essential to its 
continuous development and power. He can bring 
all sides of the national life, all the functions of 
government, all the details of legislation and ad- 
ministration, into comparison with those ideals of 
human relationship which only religion fully dis- 
closes to our view. 

6. There are many factors which contribute to 



THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 29 

the evolution of a national character and of national 
fortunes, and many efforts have been made to 
identify and describe these factors and to appraise 
their relative values. In recent times there has 
been a tendency to undervalue the influence of 
religion. But thoughtful men have always seen 
that from the beginning of history national ideals 
have been closely associated with religious faith. 
No doubt the material and outward side of a na- 
tion's history acts on its religion, and that in more 
ways than the churches usually realize. But the 
highest religion has an independent life of its own, 
is a distinct fountain of energy in human nature, 
originates history as well as receives influence from 
history. Hence no nation can live well and move 
toward the best forms of national character and 
international influence whose religion has lost grip 
upon the conscience and intelligence of its people. 
It is those who worship God most sincerely, who 
know best His will, those who possess in fullest 
measure and are most completely surrendered to 
the divine spirit, who do most to sustain the nobler 
side of the national life. It is from them that the 
severest rebukes, in them that the intensest hatred, 
of crime and vice and all materialistic habits arise. 
They are, of course, objects of derision and hatred 
on the part of those who live in these things which 
they condemn; but, in spite of their defects — the 
unwisdom of their methods, the partial nature of 



3 o CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

their own visions, and the imperfections of their 
character — they are always the springs of the loftiest 
patriotism, the real directors and sustainers of the 
noblest will of the State. 

In the nation whose citizens consciously receive 
the blessings of orderly government, and render 
to the State the truest service, there arises that 
spirit of patriotism which in dignity, in fulness of 
meaning, and in range of power is second only to 
the claims of the religious life. No doubt patriotism, 
like all other human affections or operations, has 
its dangers; but he knows nothing of the deep life 
of man nor of the history of nations who does not 
see that in patriotism there is a force at work which 
has contributed some of the richest elements to 
the moral and spiritual elevation of the human 
race. It is in the name of patriotism that men give 
themselves to the service of their country, un- 
selfishly, willingly; it is in the name of patriotism 
that they are willing to die that the nation may live. 

7. It has been a defect in many students of 
political science that they have considered the State 
too much as if it grew in isolation, functioned in 
isolation as to the interests of its own people, 
then suddenly found itself confronted with other 
States. No wonder it has seemed to such students 
as if the primary relation of one State to another, 
thus conceived as exclusive of each other in origin, 
organization, and growth, must be one of friction. 



THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 31 

People seem to think that nations must have grown 
up saying of each other only this, "We are natural 
enemies because we are different States." There 
are signs already that the World War will compel 
many scholars to revise their whole manner of 
thinking at this point. As a matter of fact, modern 
nations are born, and grow, and die in a community 
of nations. Even the United States sprang from 
another nation, and grew in the colonial period to 
a measure of power and self-consciousness in rela- 
tion with the aborigines of this country and the 
nations of Europe from which the colonists had come. 
For nearly a hundred years some statesmen have 
tried, always in vain, to maintain the life of the 
United States in isolation from the lives of other 
countries. But the efforts of the Government in 
this direction have been continuously counteracted 
by the whole life of the people. Immigration and 
travel, commerce and culture, religion and art, 
have all combined their forces to keep America 
in the family of nations and to develop her life in 
continuous contact with the life of foreign peoples. 
As there is no such thing as a mere individual 
man, so there is no such thing as a mere individual 
State. Hence there always has been a wide range 
of conduct in which nations have dealt with one 
another, and a less wide range of conduct in which 
their governments have formally acted in relation 
to each other. These relations are much more 



32 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

than those which can be covered by such words 
as "alliance" and "war." Treaties have been 
formed and honorably observed, whose breach 
could never have led to war. The observance of 
such treaties has rested upon the fact that there 
are moral relations which bind States together as 
individuals are bound together, and that a sense 
of honor can be kindled in the heart of one nation 
in its dealings with another. The laws of honesty 
and even of generosity obtain in the international 
field, as in the field of private business and indi- 
vidual life. Instinctively all people have realized 
that the State as an expression of the moral unity 
of a nation must act in the name of the character 
of that nation. If the nation is composed of men 
of honor, the State will act with honor. If the 
nation is composed of people who seek to convey 
blessings of education and religion to each other, 
the State will be impelled to think of other nations 
in terms of a like benevolence. The nation that 
has created foreign missions will gradually inspire 
its government with the will to lift up dependent 
races, over whom it has in the course of history 
obtained control. America reflects the religious 
spirit and morality of her people by her dealings 
with the people of the Philippine Islands. It was 
a great missionary who first moved the Govern- 
ment of India to establish a system of education 
for the people of that land. And it was the develop- 



THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 33 

ment of the love of constitutional government and 
of individual freedom in Great Britain which 
made that people the leaders of the world in the 
sublime task of lifting up primitive races by the 
very methods of their government and the spirit 
of their national dealings with them. 

There is, then, a morality of nations, of which 
the prescriptions of international law are but im- 
perfect expressions, just as the statute laws of 
any people are but a partial reflection of the total 
moral consciousness and behavior of the individuals 
who compose it. 

8. Reference already has been made to the 
divergent forms which the State has assumed 
at different periods of history, and in different 
parts of the world at any one period. Today the 
varieties of state organization have made it exceed- 
ingly difficult to say exactly what the limitations 
of nationality actually are. The national con- 
sciousness itself assumes various forms and is 
realized in varying degrees of intensity, according 
to the range of relationship in which each com- 
munity stands towards the rest of the world. Thus 
before 1871 each portion of the German Empire 
existed as a separate State, and yet people spoke 
of the German nation, though there was no State 
embracing all the German peoples. Switzerland is 
a nation which comprises a number of self-govern- 
ing cantons differing in race, language, and religion, 



34 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

and in other characteristics. The British Empire 
deals with the world as one State, and yet com- 
prises within itself an indefinite and perplexing 
variety of forms of government. Canada speaks 
of itself as a nation; Australia calls itself a common- 
wealth; India is known as an Empire; within the 
boundaries of South Africa a number of distinct 
forms of government still exist, in addition to that 
young State known as the Union of South Africa. 
The United States has become an Empire standing 
in peculiar and separate relations with Porto Rico, 
Cuba, and the Philippines, not to speak of the 
Panama Canal Zone. The war has brought sud- 
denly into view the right of every distinct people 
to maintain what is called their self-determination, 
and the Allies at present are pledged to secure full 
opportunity for even very small nations in Europe 
to realize their independent existence, to organize 
themselves into States according to their own 
genius and ideals. 

9. It is manifest that in spite of this vast variety 
of conditions under which humankind is organized, 
the vision of Mankind itself is rising before the 
minds of all men. The world is being drawn to- 
gether into a conscious unity of life. The races 
are realizing themselves as the Human Race, the 
peoples of the earth are almost rushing into the 
most astonishing revelation of what humanity can 
become. The nations and the States are preparing 



THE STATE AND THE CITIZEN 35 

themselves deliberately, with open eyes, for a new 
era, in which there shall be, first, an irresistible 
effort to honor the national consciousness of the 
smallest peoples, and in which the forces of the 
mightiest empires shall be brought under the 
control of a new international system. No one 
can at present describe the form which that system 
will assume. We may be sure that it will react upon 
the fundamental morality of humankind, that it 
will aim at an adequate and clear definition of 
international law, and that it will be content with 
nothing less than the establishing of some tribunal 
or other method of securing the observance of 
international law by all the States that exist in the 
world. None shall be so small as to be treated 
contrary to that law, none shall be so great that 
it can with impunity trample upon the prescrip- 
tions of that law. Towards this the world has 
been slowly moving since the discovery of America. 
The pace of movement was accelerated by Christian 
missions, commerce, and the bringing of all the 
world into relationship with Western civilization 
during the nineteenth century. The tides are now 
rushing with incalculable force, carrying all nations 
into a position where they must begin history 
afresh, together, in deliberate cooperation, on the 
basis of a divine, universal, absolutely authoritative 
moral law. 



THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL, AND WAR 



CHAPTER III 
THE STATE, THE INDIVIDUAL, AND WAR 

This brings us to consider the function of the 
State in relation to the practice of war. 

I. To begin with, it may be confidently asserted 
that no Christian man of the type with whom we 
may be concerned can or will defend an aggressive 
war. By that we mean a war undertaken by one 
State against another in order to deprive the latter 
of territory, commerce, or inhabitants for the 
exclusive benefit of the former. And in doing so 
it is good to claim the theoretical support of a 
man so Christian as Professor W. Herrmann of 
Marburg in his well-known work on Ethics; al- 
though, alas! he has forsaken the position in prac- 
tice by his support of the German policy in this 
war. "War is for the Christian morally justified, 
if it is politically correct, as an act of self-assertion 
on the part of a people in the carrying out of its 
culture-task (Kulturaufgabe)," 1 that is, in main- 
taining and propagating its own type of culture. 
If Herrmann explicitly limits this statement to the 
act of self-defence on the part of a people desiring 

l W. Herrmann, "Ethik." 2d Ed., p. 18$. 

39 



4 o CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

to defend its own form of civilization against in- 
vasion by another people, there can be no objection 
to it, as we shall see later on. He goes on to urge 
that it is the duty of the Christian to establish 
the conviction among the peoples that war for 
any other reason destroys the people that walk 
into it. 

It is, as we have already insisted, an essential 
view, absolutely necessary to be held, that the 
rules of Christian morality govern States as States. 
For, let it be repeated, the State is not a mere 
addition to the nature of the individual man, it 
is not a new kind of being in addition to the sum 
and organization of the individuals composing it. 
Rather is it the expression of the prevailing moral 
character and personal ideals of all its citizens. 
It is the effort of all these wills to act as one will. 
When we speak of it as if it were a person, we must 
remember always that it is less than a person, 
and yet is the attempt of all the persons who be- 
long to it to interpret the meaning of life and to 
realize it in harmony with one another. Hence 
the rules of justice and of honor apply to the con- 
duct of citizens through the State, in their unified 
will, as truly as through the family, and other 
groups within the State, to which each man belongs. 

We have seen that there are limits to what the 
State may attempt to do with and for its citizens. 
These limits are fixed on the one hand by its own 



STATE, INDIVIDUAL, AND WAR 41 

limitations of wisdom, insight, and goodness, on 
the other by the sacred depths of the personal 
life of its citizens and the necessity for a large and 
indefinite measure of freedom, without which the 
individual person cannot fully live his own true 
life and be in fullest measure the person he is fitted 
to be. But when these complementary facts are 
understood, it becomes clear that the State must 
be made subject to the same fundamental prin- 
ciples of morality as the individual in its dealing 
with other States. Hence there can be no just 
reason invented for an aggressive war whose aim 
is the murder and robbery of one State by another 
State. The aggrandizement of one nation at the 
cost of the freedom and rights of another nation, 
or even the propagation of a higher form of civiliza- 
tion, by war, is immoral. Only an autocracy could 
deny this and menial philosophers support the 
denial; only an ignoble democracy can make it the 
deliberate policy of its government. 

2. The essential question, then, for a student 
of Christian Ethics, and the one at present urgent 
question, is this: What is the duty of a State, which 
while maintaining good conduct on its own side 
is actually attacked and invaded for purposes of 
conquest and depredation by another State? The 
whole and fundamental fact is that when an in- 
evading army crosses its border it becomes an organ- 
ized mass of murderers and robbers. They are col- 



42 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

lectively and individually within the scope of its 
government. Towards them it has the same duties 
as towards all others who are living at that time 
upon its territory. The invaded State has the 
same responsibility, though a heavier task, towards 
the invading criminals as towards the less numerous, 
less organized, less equipped criminals among its 
own citizens. If the State is to fulfil its duty, the 
invading force must be put down. Whatever force 
is necessary to do this must be exercised at all 
costs, and to the limit of the powers of the nation 
which the State represents and for which it acts. 
Manifestly the invading criminals cannot be arrested 
and imprisoned by the ordinary police force. Their 
numbers, equipment, organization, and methods 
make that impossible. An army must be gathered, 
trained, equipped, to meet the situation. But this 
is what we call war. 

To refuse on any ground to meet the situation 
thus created is to abandon the State. It is to 
deny and surrender the primary functions for which 
it came into existence, and without whose fulfil- 
ment it simply does not exist. It is here that the 
honor of a nation becomes involved with its duty. 
The killing of the invading enemy is a necessary 
form of the fulfilment of that duty. In the circum- 
stances described, punishment cannot be inflicted, 
the State cannot carry out its inherent task, without 
inflicting that penalty. The pacifist who insists 



STATE, INDIVIDUAL, AND WAR 43 

that the State should rather perish than kill is 
saying rather that it becomes wrong for a State 
to exist as soon as it is attacked by an enemy. It 
must consent to die whensoever an organized foreign 
foe appears within its borders. No argument will 
ever make this program of conduct appear reason- 
able to the vast majority of Christian men. They 
will always feel that somewhere in it there is con- 
tained a fallacy, a misinterpretation of the meaning 
and of the effect of sacrifice, a misrepresentation or 
miscalculation of the duty of the State, a failure 
to compare truly the fulfilment of its task in that 
act of killing which is necessary under these cir- 
cumstances, with the fulfilment of that task among 
its own citizens. 

The pacifist mode of thought seems to surrender 
the whole world of moral considerations which are 
implied in the existence of the State, for the one 
theory that it can never be right under any cir- 
cumstances to inflict death upon any man. The 
duty of the State to safeguard its citizens, the 
sense of honor involved in the defence of its duty, 
the noble instinct of the human soul to protect the 
weak and prevent the wicked from attaining their 
ends — these are all cast aside in order to avoid 
the one fact, which is indeed a dreadful, but here 
an inevitable, fact, the putting of the criminal 
to death. Frankly, it comes to be a weighing of 
alternatives in the light of their moral content 



44 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

and the significance of their future for the Kingdom 
of God and the welfare of mankind — whether it 
is a greater or holier thing for a State to allow its 
citizens to be destroyed by murderous invaders 
or to repel their purpose by putting them to the 
death which they seek to inflict. Death at human 
hands will eventuate in either case. Is the mere 
act of killing, of putting an end to the life of a 
man, itself so inherently sinful that it cannot be 
considered in relation to any purpose had in view, 
to any results which may flow from it? From all 
this it seems to be the one conclusion which the 
most sincere Christian thinker ought to reach that 
a country has the same right to fight invaders 
from another country as it has to put down by 
force its own criminals; and if in order to do this 
the infliction of death is inevitable, then the func- 
tion of the State clears it of guilt in the matter, 
turns the act into a solemn duty. 

It is an obvious corollary from this that another 
country has not only the right but has it as a most 
sacred obligation to aid the country which has 
thus been invaded, to rid itself of the enemy and 
to punish him for the breach of international rights. 2 



2 "Every nation should be an armed nation, not because it re- 
gards any other with hostility, not because it imagines that any 
other has an interest in assaulting it, but because its own soil, its 
own language, its own laws, its own government, are given to it 
and are beyond all measure precious to it." F. D. Maurice, "Social 
Morality." 2d Ed., p. 191. 



STATE, INDIVIDUAL, AND WAR 45 

3. Of course in writing all this we have in view 
constantly the supreme event in modern history, 
which at once illustrates the depths to which a 
State may descend when it invades a land, and 
the heights to which another State may go when 
it seeks in the name of righteousness and of God 
to maintain the order, the freedom of its citizens. 
Belgium had exactly the same obligations to resist 
Germany when the German soldiers were within 
her border as to punish her own criminals; and 
Great Britain and France, apart from all questions 
of danger to themselves, had a moral obligation to 
intervene for the protection of a neighboring State, 
in the fulfilment of a divine obligation. Even 
without that solemn covenant or treaty which 
bound both countries to do this thing, and even 
if there had been no further danger incurred by 
themselves, when Germany set out brutally to 
overwhelm and absorb the Belgian people and 
State, it was a righteous act for Great Britain and 
France to prevent the crime and to maintain the 
existence, integrity, and honor of the Belgian people. 

These are the deep and universal moral prin- 
ciples which underlie the action of America in her 
entry upon the war. First, she was actually invaded, 
for her own citizens and property were attacked 
against all law and all human considerations when 
her ships were sunk, her citizens drowned. It 
certainly aggravates the crime of Germany, and 



46 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

casts a luster upon the will of this people, that it 
was only after a long series of protests against the 
German policy and when every means of avoiding 
the issue had been carefully and deliberately em- 
ployed, that the Government of America at last 
found itself face to face with a duty which it 
could not escape without surrendering the very 
meaning of government and losing the sense not 
merely of national security but of that sacred and 
intensely Christian thing, national honor. It is 
an added, although not the primary consideration, 
and one which adds a high and generous zest to 
her great undertaking, that America found herself 
side by side with nations which were in danger of 
being overwhelmed. The foe against which they 
struggle acts, as we shall see later, with flawless 
consistency and tremendous energy upon a theory 
of national life which at crucial points is the direct 
contradiction of that which we have adopted and 
described in these pages, and which we believe to 
represent in the main the spirit, the conscience, the 
will of all the other great nations of the world. It 
is' in pursuit of ends which no Christian civilization 
can tolerate as a permanent element in human 
history that the German Empire entered upon 
this war. It is in meeting the assault not merely 
of one State upon another, but of one reasoned 
system of morality, which is deeply immoral, upon 
a system of morality which is founded on conscience 



STATE, INDIVIDUAL, AND WAR 47 

enlightened by the will of God through the mind 
of Christ, that America fights beside Great Britain 
and France. On the outcome of the struggle the 
future of righteousness depends. 

4. If we pursue the argument to the end it works 
out in this way. If the invaded State submits 
with only verbal protest, with only an appeal to the 
law and judgment of God and to the better self, 
the conscience, of the foe, it refuses to do its essential 
duty in the suppression of crime within its borders. 
And the refusal is then based on the fact that the 
criminals are foreign and powerful. That is what 
the State of Luxemburg did when German hordes 
poured into its territory across the Rhine. And 
none has called her act sublime. 3 Further, if the 
State proceeds, not believing perhaps in capital 
punishment, to arrest the invaders and to imprison 
them, and refuses to smite them lest they should 
die, its representatives will certainly themselves be 
killed and the invaders will quell the land. If, 
still, further, seeing the futility and wickedness and 
weakness of all this, the State determines to do 
all it can to put down this lawlessness within its 
borders, to fulfil its sacred duty as the guardian 
of moral order, it must create a force which shall 
be able to execute capital punishment upon the so- 
called invading army — which is only a traditional 
name for criminals, for murderers, ravishers, and 

8 See below, pp. 94-96. 



48 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

robbers within its own borders. Whatever dignity 
they may claim, these terms describe accurately 
the invading soldiers from the point of view of the 
invaded nation. The resisting force it creates is 
called an army, and its operations are called war. 
But a State using such a force and for such an end 
in such a spirit is simply carrying out to the limit 
of its power the duty inherent in its nature, the 
essential task for which, in the will of God and in 
the nature of man's life, it was created. 

This is no mere recondite and subtle argument. 
This is exactly what happened when Belgium was 
ruthlessly trampled under foot by the German 
armies, and, losing her life for a while, saved her 
soul; while Luxemburg, saving her life, lost it. 

The Armenians for long centuries lay at the 
mercy of the Turkish Empire, unarmed, meek, 
helpless. If any appeal to the generosity of human 
nature could be imagined more direct, more pathetic, 
more prolonged, let it be named and described. 
Yet even today the Moslem Government is carrying 
on the work of systematic massacre and complete 
abolition of that race. It is not true that a State 
can save its life from an enemy by submission and 
trust and sacrifice. The Russians the other day, 
or rather the Bolsheviki acting in their name, 
flung themselves at the feet of Germany, unarmed, 
appealing to the pledged word, the sense of honor 
of a great military Empire; and immediately all 



STATE, INDIVIDUAL, AND WAR 49 

promises were broken, all honor denied its claims, 
all mercy treated as ignoble weakness, and whole 
regions brought under the ruthless domination of 
a pitiless invader. It is not true that a State can 
save its life from an enemy by submission and trust 
and sacrifice, if the enemy has made itself deliber- 
ately impervious to any moral appeal. 

The fact is that a great deal, if not all of the 
argument for non-resistance urged on religious and 
Christian grounds, arises from a confusion of two 
separate and divine institutions, namely, the State 
and the Church. We shall try in later pages to 
describe the mutual relation of these supreme 
institutions in human life. Suffice it to say here 
in brief that while sacrifice is essential to the life 
and growth, and is an inherent duty, of the Church, 4 
it is fatal to the State. While the use of force is 
essential to the functions of the State, necessary 
to the healthful and beneficent discharge of its 
duty, it is fatal to the Church. Force and sacrifice 
are both methods of God, as Christianity has at 
last made known in its Gospel to the world. In 
God they are both exercised with that perfection 
of wisdom which is His alone. In human society 
as a whole their operation has become assigned 
to two different institutions. The same men must, 
or ought to, live and work wholeheartedly in each, 
out of which devotion, if it become universal in 

4 See below, pp. 94-96, 114-117. 



5 o CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

sincerity and constancy of soul, the perfect race 
of man would swiftly and gloriously emerge, like 
a noontide sun. In the meantime we must be con- 
tent to live in the bewildering twilight which our 
partial consecration, infected and limited by our 
selfish and callous hearts, prolongs. And the 
result is that we must serve the State with its 
use of force, and the Church with its use of sacri- 
fice, aware that in our world as it is, each is difficult 
of fulfilment, each is obscure in its effect, yet both 
being more widely and fully exercised today than 
yesterday, a brighter tomorrow is being prepared 
for our race. 



THE GERMAN MILITARIST DOCTRINE 
OF THE STATE 



CHAPTER IV 

THE GERMAN MILITARIST DOCTRINE 
OF THE STATE 

We must reckon now with a very different con- 
ception of the State from that which we have 
described above. For there has arisen in our mod- 
ern world a system of government which is founded 
more openly and deliberately upon a definite theory 
than any other known to history except the United 
States of America. And in most of the fundamental 
principles on which they are based these two govern- 
ments stand in complete and irreconcilable hos- 
tility to one another. It is true that the world 
owes much to German students of political science, 
and that many of them would repudiate almost 
in toto the theory, policy, and spirit of the German 
Empire of today. But another group has gained 
the mastery, and it is their position with its con- 
sequences which we must examine partially in this 
chapter. 

I. There is one strong characteristic of the 
German mind which we must remember if we 
would understand in part how it has come to hold 
opinions and engage in practices from which the 

53 



54 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

rest of the world recoils. This characteristic, at 
once its glory and its supreme danger, is its strict 
adherence to the faith in ideas and in their logical 
applicability to history. When it has laid hold 
of an abstract statement as being the essential 
truth, it has no hesitation, rather a great joy, in 
deducing from it all possible logical conclusions 
and applying them without fear upon fields of 
inquiry or action. It has been trained to take the 
consequences of this, alike in the work of a philos- 
opher or a theologian in his study, and of a states- 
man dealing with national life. The latter in 
Germany boasts of dealing always with the actual 
and of attaining dazzling results by his close atten- 
tion to the facts before him. Nevertheless he is 
ever guided by, generally he is the slave of, some 
abstract principle, or even some term, which he 
uses as a key to the facts and a guide in his en- 
deavors. 

This method receives a vivid, and in its results 
a lurid, illustration in the use which the German 
militaristic school have made of the doctrine that 
the essence of the State is "the Will to Power." 
The history of the phrase must go back at least 
to the emphasis which Hegel put upon the "will" 
in his theory of the State. This has been by some 
criticized as a defect (so Bluntschli), but treated 
by others as if it were the supreme merit in Hegel's 
philosophy of the State; the fact being that he 



GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 55 

was careful to recognize other elements of human 
nature as entering into the State in addition to 
the mere will of man. 

Another word was emphasized by Bluntschli 
in his famous work, when he said, "The State 
must have power in order to maintain its independ- 
ence and to enforce its decrees. It is only as pos- 
sessing power that a State can exist and live." l 
But we must remember that that very careful 
thinker balanced this with many other equally 
true, but modifying utterances; as, for instance, 
when he says on the same page, "the forces of 
moral and political development shall not be op- 
posed to the destiny of humanity." But there has 
arisen in Germany a school which has maintained 
that the central and essential nature of the State 
is "the will to power." And from that unmodified 
statement, the combination of the phraseology of 
Hegel and Bluntschli, they have drawn the most 
astonishing logical conclusions and have used them 
to produce the most appalling practical results in 
history. 2 



1 "The Theory of the State," p. 321. 

8 Some maintain that Nietzsche's phrase "the will to power" 
is derived from Schopenhauer's doctrine of "the will to live." But 
the doctrine of the will has received a rich development since the 
days of Kant and Hegel; and the theory that "power" is the supreme 
characteristic of the State, so fully worked by Treitschke, com- 
bined with it naturally to make Nietzsche's phrase "the will to 
power" strike fire in imperialistic minds among the leaders of 
thought and action. 



56 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

Let us trace some lines of this logical process, 
those which concern us especially in this discussion. 

2. While the possession of power is essential to 
the existence of the State, it must be used always 
for the good of the people as a whole. The State 
must undertake the full task of guidance and con- 
trol, in defining the highest good, in seeking to 
promote it, and in defending its citizens in the 
pursuit and possession of their national well-being. 
From certain points of view the German Govern- 
ment has carried out this program with magnificent 
results. We cannot here tell the story of its lavish 
encouragement of science, its effective municipal 
government. It has even taken in hand, to direct 
and control, the higher life of the people in respect 
of art and religion. No side of human interest 
has been neglected which could be employed to 
create a unified nation, conscious of dependence 
upon the supreme governing authorities, rendering 
to them a grateful obedience and an unlimited 
confidence, nourishing the consciousness of a dis- 
tinct and unequalled destiny. 

It is true, of course, that the remarkable success 
of this German system of government has not 
satisfied its people entirely. The Social Democratic 
movement, however its leaders have betrayed it 
since the inception of war, did express an ever- 
widening yearning of the heart for another kind 
of freedom, for a government where the people 



GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 57 

could themselves speak and be conscious of direct- 
ing their own destinies. And some indeed main- 
tain that the dread of this movement on the part 
of the rulers of Germany was one of those forces 
which drove them into war. But uneasiness of 
conscience in some, devotion to more humane ideals 
in other, sections of the German people have proved 
to be powerless before the steady, systematic, tyran- 
nous pressure of the will which pursued the ideals 
we have set forth. 

That which has given the German form of national 
organization its peculiar significance is the fact 
that it was organized by a government which 
conceived of itself primarily as a military force, 
which looked out upon the world through the eyes 
of military leaders, which considered every side of 
the national life as contributing something more 
or less directly to the efficiency of the armies of 
Germany. Teachers in the primary schools were 
raising generations of soldiers, preachers from the 
pulpit were inspiring German ideals, men of science 
were employed to investigate every device that 
would add to the power of a fighting force, as well 
as to the power of industry and commerce. The 
Emperor in one of his speeches said that the army 
was the main prop on which the life of the nation 
rested. He himself did as much as anyone to 
turn it from a mere prop of a great structure into 
the rudder of a vessel sailing out on a great 



58 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

adventure. The King of militant Prussia was the 
Emperor, director of German destiny. 

3. We should never forget, in discussing the 
progress of the German Empire, that there were 
great and deep defects in its system, defects which 
were making themselves manifest with increasing 
force as the Government developed its authority 
and established its policy. In fact the efficiency 
was outward and physical in its principal forms; 
the defects were in the structure of life. The 
workingmen cherished no gratitude for the indus- 
trial efficiency to which they had been trained; 
and the almost socialistic laws which were supposed 
to care for their old age and their days of sickness 
did not appease them. In spite of these blessings, 
they were conscious of their poor wages, their 
political helplessness, their social disabilities. Every- 
where the spirit that was in them found itself 
hemmed in, compelled to practice only the virtues 
of unlimited obedience and submission. Even the 
development of the mighty army and the glorifica- 
tion of the military career cast its shadow upon the 
spiritual life of the people. The prestige of the 
officer class tended to disparage those careers 
which until 1870 had been considered the supreme 
objects of ambition by the young men of Germany. 
The enormous and very rapid development of 
industry concentrated the attention of the people 
thus suddenly enriched upon money and the pleas- 






GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 59 

ures which it could buy. The whole people were 
like some families whom sudden wealth drives 
into materialism of spirit which destroys the soul. 
On the other hand the efficient local government 
could not conceal the fact from close observers 
that there were deep diseases hidden under a fair 
surface. In Berlin before the war there were 40,- 
000 one-room homes, whereas in London, whose 
slums Germans were taught to despise, with its 
population many times larger than that of Berlin, 
there were only 12,000 one-room homes. Only 
the strictest police control could have concealed 
the fact that such misery existed in Berlin. But 
it is just the maintenance of police control which 
on the one hand produces superficial good results 
and on the other creates a universal feeling of 
restrictedness, of humiliation, of irritation, which 
does not help to produce a noble personal bearing 
and a generous social spirit. 

4. On the educational side the development of 
intellectual power was not equalled by attention 
to the development of character. So far as character 
was dealt with, it was the character of a boy who 
looks forward to the service of his Kaiser, the career 
of one who makes wealth or makes war, or gains 
distinction in official life. Between these his mind 
must choose, and his spirit was impelled in too 
prevailing a measure to the standards and ideals 
which such careers suggested to him. Even 



60 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

academic careers became tainted, and the Church 
an expression of the imperial spirit. The relentless 
thoroughness with which the very effectual educa- 
tional process was carried on seems to have tended 
towards the elaboration of the memory and the 
logical faculties at the expense of other powers of 
the mind, and the process was so relentless that 
German observers traced to it the increasing num- 
ber of child suicides which caused anxiety in high 
places. 

But a character was actually being formed 
through fifty years of imperial policy. A character 
had become familiar already all over the world, 
which stands revealed and confessed in the making 
of the war and in the publications by which the 
Germans have sought to justify it and to inspire 
each other for its prosecution to a victorious end. 
The main feature of this national character may 
be summarized in the phrase, "unparalleled self- 
esteem." They came to believe that Germany 
had manifested powers beyond those of any other 
race or nation, that in every department of life 
they excelled all others; and that the providence 
of God which allowed them to develop later than 
other nations intended them as the perfect flower 
of human evolution to exercise authority over all 
other inferior races and peoples. This conscious- 
ness of surpassing excellence tended to aggravate 
the craving for power. The matter has been well 



GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 61 

put by Dr. Bang in that work which has thrown 
So lurid a light upon one side of the life of the Ger- 
man people: 3 "In Germany, such a craving for 
power, such a worship of mere strength, has taken 
root and grown, that the claim of right to be the 
determining factor in international relations has 
been entirely pushed aside. A colossal and ever 
increasing self-admiration, a belief in the glory 
of all things German, the surpassing merits of the 
German nature {Wesen), which alone has the right 
to rule in the world, a cynical, brutal assertion 
that in relation to this claim all existing treaties, 
all appeals to international law, all consideration 
for the weaker peoples, are of no significance what- 
ever — all this we have witnessed with shuddering 
astonishment. This German claim is to be en- 
forced, of course, for the true welfare of the world, 
but if necessary against the will of the whole world, 
by the aid of sheer violence. This is barbarism 
unadorned. " 4 

5. The possession of power by a nation, taken 
along with the effectiveness with which it de- 
velops the life of its own people, is the measure 
of its right to deal forcibly with other nations, 
alike for its own interest and for theirs. This 
means, of course, that a nation has always the 

3 "Hurrah and Hallelujah, The Teaching of Germany's Poets, 
Prophets, Professors, and Preachers, A Documentation," by J. 
P. Bang, D.D., Professor at the University of Copenhagen. 

*Ibid. t p. 18. 



62 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

right, if it has the power, to seek the well-being 
of its own people at the cost of other peoples; with 
the subjoined ethical defense that it will in this 
way convey the blessing of its higher attainments 
to the people whom it conquers. From this point 
of view the Germans, over a wide section of their 
intelligent people, have been taught to cherish 
the idea that they, as a people, must use their 
power in order that the whole world may receive 
the blessing of their national civilization. It is 
strange that this idea should have arisen in the 
hearts of some thinkers and poets long before the 
Empire was founded. Dr. Bang in the work al- 
ready quoted (p. 35) has described the influence 
of one of these poets, Geibel, whose famous distich 
has exercised an enormous influence over the thought 
of the people. It has been quoted probably hundreds 
of times in every direction during the war. Dr. 
Bang's book, in its citation of opinions, is able 
to give us a glimpse of the extent to which these 
extraordinary words have convinced and inspired 
the leaders of the people: 

"Und es mag am deutschen Wesen 
Einmal nock die Welt genesen." 

The words may be translated: "The world may 
yet be healed by the German nature." 

We are familiar with the utterances of speakers 
and poets who in other lands arouse the patriotic 



GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 63 

devotion of their people by enthusiastic reviews of 
their history and descriptions of their position 
in the world. Utterances like these as expressions 
of national joy, pride, and hope have their real 
value, and a certain moral beauty; but among the 
Germans these sayings have been made essential 
parts of the program of the nation. If, as the 
Kaiser in an exalted moment said in 1905, "We 
are the salt of the earth," then the German con- 
cludes that he must sprinkle the salt over the 
whole surface of the earth. If the German nature 
can be a healing benefit to mankind, it must be 
forced upon the sick patient which mankind is. 
If German culture has produced astonishing results 
at home, how good and great a thing it would be 
to produce the same astonishing results in every 
other land. From thoughts like these the German 
has quickened in himself a sense of duty to the 
world. He has sanctified as a pious endeavor the 
will to power and a determination to expand the 
dominions of Germany until she shall cease to be 
merely a great power and become a world power. 5 
Yet another element in the situation must be 
brought forward. The German people have mul- 
tiplied with great rapidity. The population was 
found to be too dense to be supported within the 
home territories. Millions of Germans had left 



5 For the distinction between these two ideas see Bluntschli. 
"The Theory of the State," p. 321. 



64 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

for other lands. They had settled in North America 
and South America and Australia. They had 
disappeared into the life of other nations, come 
under the control of other governments. Germany 
looked upon this as a loss over which she must 
mourn, a wrong which she must correct. The 
mission of Germany in the world will be limited, 
its full exercise prevented unless Germany can 
follow her sons overseas, and retain them under 
the imperial system to count as Germans still, 
expressions all around the world of her glory, nour- 
ishes of her life. To the logical German mind 
again this seemed to suggest, nay even to impose, 
the duty of following her emigrants even by force, 
fighting all opposition, that the Fatherland might 
still retain the control of its far-wandering children. 
These various lines of thought are not themselves 
wrong, except in the aggressive deductions. Other 
nations have sought to develop themselves to the 
utmost, other nations have colonies, other nations 
have expanded their civilization over neighboring 
peoples and into distant portions of the world. 
Spain in South America, Great Britain and her 
dominions and the Indian Empire, France and 
every region in the world that is counted to her 
credit, even that young nation, the United States 
of America, with its West Indies and its Philippine 
Islands — these have all given the blessings of their 
civilization to great portions of the world, and in 



GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 65 

doing so they have all undoubtedly received the 
richer development of their own national life. But 
Germany, confronted with the situation, forming 
these ambitions and intensifying them to a degree 
of white heat, found herself without a world which 
she could conquer, without the opportunity in 
which she had been prevented by other nations. 
There remained only one possible way, it seemed 
to her, of achieving what other peoples had achieved, 
the way of war. But this dream of war under the 
circumstances meant the conquering of other strong 
empires. And the contemplation of that idea in 
the mind of the Kaiser, as his speeches abundantly 
show, and at last in the almost official declarations 
of von Bernhardi, grew into a conception of world 
domination. Germany could not win her way 
to the place occupied by the countries we have 
named except by conquering one or all of them; 
and conquering them meant raising herself above 
them to a height they had not reached, and exercis- 
ing a world influence they had not exercised. The 
dream to us seems ghastly, to them it seemed 
heavenly in its inspiring force. 

The development of German power might have 
gone along other lines which already it was pur- 
suing. A more spiritually-minded race might have 
said: "In commerce we are catching up and will 
soon pass them all, in science, in art, in the ways 
of an orderly home government, we are leaders 



66 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

of the world. This is glory, this is essential power, 
this is what we are really giving to humanity. Let 
us continue the gift even when it means the sending 
abroad large numbers of our people to live else- 
where." This is the very essence of power when 
it is interpreted in the supreme terms, which are 
moral and spiritual. And this is what the earlier 
German men of letters and philosophers meant 
when they spoke of the preeminence of Germany 
among the peoples of the world. 

But in our day Prussia had gained control of 
Germany. Her extraordinary growth had been 
frankly created by her devotion to military power. 
In the latter part of the nineteenth century the 
aggrandizement of that warlike race proceeded 
with great strides. She conquered Denmark, ab- 
sorbed Hanover, brought Austria to her feet. 
Then she tore away valuable portions of fair France. 
It seemed as if there were no limits to her power 
in the pursuance of military ideals and the con- 
tinuance of the military spirit as cherished in 
Prussia for centuries. 

6. These two great streams of history, character, 
and national interest in Germany coalesced. The 
passion for the development of a worthy national 
life was united with the forceful energy of a Prussian 
militarism. Hence there arose the modern con- 
ception of war which, while no doubt rejected by 
many intelligent and spiritually-minded Germans, 



GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 6 7 

yet became the dominant influence in its life, 
directed its policy at home and abroad, created 
the empire of unparalleled military efficiency and 
energy, and drove it into the World War. 

First, we must begin with a certain abstract 
principle which may be stated as follows: The 
essence of the State is power, the supreme mani- 
festation of power is war. Therefore the State 
must ever make itself fit for war. Or in this way: 
War is the manifestation of power, the result of 
war is the determination of the right of a nation 
to dictate terms to the conquered. The conquered 
has no right except that of submission, the con- 
queror no duty except that of gathering the full 
fruits of victory. 

Second, war being an essential of national life, 
it must be necessary to the health of the people. 
"The efforts directed towards the abolition of war 
must be termed not only foolish, but absolutely 
immoral, and must be stigmatized as unworthy 
of the human race." 6 "War is an instrument of 
progress, a regulator in the life of humanity, an 
indispensable factor in civilization, a creative 
force." 7 "Our people must learn to see that the 
maintenance of peace never can or may be the 
goal of a policy. . . . The inevitableness, the ideal- 
ism, and the blessings of war, as an indispensable 

6 Von Bernhardi, "How Germany Makes War," p. 34. 
T Ibid., p. 2. 



68 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

and stimulating law of development, must be 
repeatedly emphasized." 8 

Third, the conduct of a war is part of the struggle 
for existence, which is a law of nature, as Darwin- 
ism has revealed to the modern world. According 
to this doctrine, real evolution from the lower to 
the higher forms of life depends on the conquest 
of the weak by the strong. War, therefore, is the 
manifestation in human life of this deep, divine 
principle. "Might is at once the supreme right, 
and the dispute as to what is right is decided by 
the arbitrament of war. War gives a biologically 
just decision, since its decisions rest on the very 
nature of things." 9 "But it [war] is not only a 
biological law, but a moral obligation, and as such, 
an indispensable factor in civilization." 10 

Fourth, German writers are quoted abundantly 
by Dr. Bang who have striven to bring this con- 
ception of war into relation with Christianity. 
This is not the place to make quotations, but it 
may be right to say that after a careful reading 
of these and of numerous similar passages to be 
found elsewhere in the literature of the war, the 
judgment must be recorded that seldom in the 
checkered history of Christian thought has a mass 
of opinion been expressed that can equal this in 

8 Von Bernhardi, "Germany and the Next War," p. 37. 

9 Ibid., p. 23. 

10 Ibid., p. 24. 



GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 69 

the qualities which we may summarize as grotesque, 
immoral, and blasphemous. Every one of these 
hard adjectives can be easily justified by a scrutiny 
of the writings referred to. 

7. This whole view of war is in direct contrast 
to that w T hich we have in earlier pages described 
and defined. It derives itself from abstractions, 
it seeks to justify itself by past history and im- 
perfect scientific theories. There is nothing more 
dangerous in our world than the tyranny of ab- 
stract ideas, of the use of terms not carefully defined 
and limited by application of them to the manifold 
circumstances of life, where they only partially 
apply. On the general conception described above, 
the following points of criticism must in the mean- 
time be sufficient: 

First, whatever truth is in the statement that 
some wars have brought blessings in the past does 
not in the least prove war to be a permanent and 
essential condition of progress. When the nations 
have been raised to higher levels of life and brought 
under the guidance of moral principles which were 
inoperative in earlier periods of history, the spirit 
and practice of war must depress and degrade. 

Second, this doctrine, if practiced by all nations, 
would concentrate the whole world upon war as 
the supreme good. Every other side of life would 
be organized and made subservient to this. It 
is one thing for a German military philosopher to 



7 o CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

argue as von Bernhardi does, in order to encourage 
the uneasy conscience of his people living in a 
peaceable world, or a world that desires peace. 
The picture of one supremely powerful military 
power is the picture before their minds. It is quite 
another thing when one calmly pictures a world 
of nations, every one of which holds the doctrine 
of von Bernhardi. It would be a world made up 
of armed nations, of vast organizations of life, all 
of which found their true meaning and unified 
effect in the efficiency of their military establish- 
ments; and these establishments would have to be 
co-extensive with the total activities of the peoples. 
This appalling picture means the destruction of 
all moral ideals, the expulsion of the Christian 
spirit, the erection of a kingdom of evil as wide 
as the world and as deep as man's devotion to war. 
Third, this whole conception of a world uni- 
versally ordered for war would establish as the 
ultimate moral truth the doctrine defended by 
von Bernhardi regarding the struggle for existence, 
in which the fittest would always be the victorious 
army. This is the negation of all right. It must 
be pronounced the most inhuman, the most anti- 
Christian view of human nature which can be 
fashioned by an evil and distorted imagination. 
The present situation in Europe is an illustration 
of what the dethroning of righteousness and the 
enthroning of force would mean for the whole world. 



GERMAN DOCTRINE OF THE STATE 71 

Fourth, it is certain that humanity will not 
accept this doctrine. It may be that it is difficult 
for us to anticipate the manner in which the human 
race can maintain virility without war, can nour- 
ish the passion of patriotism without the rivalries 
that hitherto have led to war, can manifest the 
fulness of sacrifice without the free offering of 
soldiers in battle. But this question is one which 
we may well leave to the future. The spirit of 
man has not shown itself without resources; there 
are no doubt within it as yet unsuspected, undis- 
covered wellsprings of life. There may yet be 
developed tasks as great as war which will call out 
sacrifice, nourish virility, stimulate the spirit of 
adventure. What these may be, how they will 
shape themselves, what ends of pursuit will be 
involved, and what price the struggle will demand, 
we cannot as yet imagine. But beyond the present 
horizon these things lie. What we have to deal 
with today is the fundamental fact that he en- 
thrones might without mercy, force without right- 
eousness, who conceives of the development of a 
people only in terms of war, with all its ruthless 
results. He has lost the vision of that Kingdom 
of God which the Christian faith has urged us to 
believe is the destiny of man. 11 

11 The extent to which the conscience even of Christian men 
has been confused and blinded by the military ambition of the 
German Empire is nowhere more lamentably illustrated than in 
the recent published utterances of an eminent theologian and 



72 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

brilliant writer, Professor Ernst Troeltsch of Heidelberg. An 
apparently trustworthy account of his opinions as given in the 
year 1917 in a conversation at Heidelberg has been published by 
Professor Charles S. Sherrington of Oxford. 

On being asked why war should be a necessity, since no one in 
England thought of making war on Germany, Professor Troeltsch 
said: 

"The War is a necessity for Germany because England has so 
much that it is absolutely necessary for Germany to possess in 
order to fulfil her role as a world State." 

Being asked what were the possessions which Germany so much 
desired, Professor Troeltsch said: 

"Ports and colonies in many parts of the world — Australia, 
South Africa, Hongkong, India. England is not really strong, 
but there has been no strong power to dispute these great sources 
of wealth with her. These sources of wealth must fall to a new 
world power, and that is clearly Germany." . . . "But England 
as a political influence is becoming effete; her governments exem- 
plify that; they exhibit little insight into world-politics today. 
When our navy is larger than the English it will be too late for 
England to interfere, and the opportunity will rest with Germany. 
The day for the decision of England's fate will then come quickly." 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 



CHAPTER V 
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 

Hitherto we have been discussing the institution 
called the State, especially in relation to the fact 
of war. We have tried to establish the position 
that war as a defensive measure for the protection 
of the rights of its citizens is one of the essential 
functions of the State. It arises from the necessity 
for the maintenance of a moral order within its 
territory, on the basis of which the national life is 
to proceed. 

We have also examined briefly the doctrine of 
the State and of war which has been promulgated 
by the limitless ambition and the uneasy conscience 
of German leaders. The program which they 
describe would result, we believe, in the destruc- 
tion of all morality within any nation which delib- 
erately and thoroughly adopts it. And if it were 
made the program of all nations and carried out 
over the face of the earth, it would create a con- 
dition from the very imagination of which heart 
and mind must shrink back in amazement and 
horror. 

i. There is another institution in the world, 

75 



76 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

the Church of Christ, with whose nature and influ- 
ence we must now reckon; for we cannot understand 
the life of a community without understanding its 
religion, and throughout Christendom religion de- 
pends upon the existence and work of the Church. 
In early times religion was looked upon simply as 
one phase of the life of the community, as a whole, 
one function of the State. The chief of a tribe was 
very often its priest. Only with the fuller develop- 
ment of the life of a people has a distinction been 
drawn between the organization of the people for 
religious ends and their organization for temporal 
and secular ends. 1 

When Jesus began His ministry, the Jewish people 
existed mainly as a Church, while the functions of 
the State rested in the representatives of imperial 
Rome. The political situation in Palestine was 
extremely complicated. There were four main 
political sections: first the Roman authorities, 
second the party of the Sadducees, third the party 
of the Pharisees, fourth the party of the Herodians. 
At every point the principles on which Jesus founded 
His own policy came into competition with the 
principles or policy of one or other of these parties. 
His principles laid an emphasis on individuality, 
on the infinite value of each human personality, 
which has proved itself one of the deepest forces 

1 The progress of this development is best illustrated in the 
history of Israel from Moses to the death of Christ. 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 77 

in the creation of the modern, the Christian world. 
But in His ministry He was not dealing, as we too 
often suppose, merely with individuals, irrespective 
of their social and political environment. He was 
deliberately creating a new community, whose 
nature would bring it into contact with every 
other human institution. 

The Church of Christ was not founded and 
did not come into full consciousness as a distinctive 
community until after His death and resurrection. 
Without these events it cannot be conceived to 
exist. They are among the primary forces which 
produced it, and their permanent power is one of 
the vital conditions of its continued existence. 
When the Church did come into conscious being 
as a distinct community, it became speedily iden- 
tified as a new and mighty fact in human history. 
Roman statesmen ere long saw in it a foe more 
subtle than any which they had ever encountered, 
an institution whose very nature made it, as his- 
tory has proved, invincible before even the breadth 
and force of Roman statesmanship. 

2. We may briefly define the Church for our 
present purpose as that community of human 
beings of all races and classes who are brought 
together by reason of their ardent faith in Jesus 
Christ as their Saviour and Lord, and whose lives 
are spent in obedience to His law in the practical 
manifestation of His spirit of universal love. 



78 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

Two of the great characteristics of this com- 
munity, which we may name as relevant to our 
present task, are that in its essence it is unworldly 
and international or inter-racial. By the former 
we mean not merely that its source is spiritual, 
but that the whole meaning of its existence is to 
be found in the moral and spiritual sphere. It 
may possess buildings, but it does not exist for 
them and can exist without them. Its continued 
life may be nourished by the variety of its institu- 
tional arrangements and its influence upon humanity 
enlarged by them, but if these institutions bring 
it into the exercise of merely earthly policies and 
the pursuit of earthly gains, its spirit is wronged, 
its reality is brought into doubt. It is international 
in the sense that it draws its members on equal 
terms from literally all classes of human beings, 
and seeks to bring them into a conscious fellow- 
ship with one another which cannot be equaled by 
any other institution, not even by the State. 

These facts do not mean that it has no relation 
with the actual world. Rather is it true that the 
more intensely it realizes its spiritual nature and 
pursues its spiritual ends, the more powerfully does 
it produce its characteristic and ennobling effect 
upon human life. As a distinct social community 
it necessarily comes into comparison and contact 
with other social institutions. It has interacted 
with them from the beginning of its history to this 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 79 

day. It has been influenced by their spirit, and 
it has, wherever its true functions have been exer- 
cised, exerted immeasurable influence upon their 
character. 

3. Especially has the Church from the beginning 
been related to the State, in whatever form the 
latter existed in any country, in any period of 
history. No more than its Master can it escape 
that relationship. Slowly did it emerge through 
what we now call Christendom, as the one supreme 
organization of men whose ideal is to gather all 
the citizens of a nation, and even the citizens of 
all nations, into conscious mutual relationships of 
trust and love and service under its own inspira- 
tion and direction. Thus in its empire over the 
spiritual life it alone stands comparison with, and 
is vitally related with, the State in its empire over 
the temporal relations of men. 

The ideal relationship of the Church to the State 
is somewhat simple of description, though the 
actual history has been extremely complicated. Its 
purpose, and where it is powerful its actual effect, 
is to stimulate the ethical ideals of the community 
as a whole, to purify the purposes of the govern- 
ment, to give energy to every political and social 
force that seeks to extend justice and mercy through- 
out the community, to encourage all efforts to 
elevate the entire life of the nation. It is under 
the influence of the Church that the very fact of 



80 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

war has been brought increasingly under severe 
criticism and condemnation. If today men hate 
war, if they have ceased to consider, in most Chris- 
tian lands, that it is a necessity of human life, if 
efforts have been made to moralize the methods 
of warfare between modern nations, these influences 
can be traced directly to the teaching and spirit 
of the Church of Christ. One of its most powerful 
and subtle influences is to be found in the fact that 
men who deny the claims of the Church yet cling 
to its ethical and social ideals as if these were pri- 
meval and indisputable possessions of the human 
spirit. But it is one of the glories of the Christian 
religion that its fundamental teachings about man 
have thus come to be accepted as if they were 
inevitable and inalienable. As a matter of fact, 
their meaning has been only laboriously discovered 
and their tenure of the human heart must always 
be insecure unless the force which revealed them 
also retains them in the hearts of men. Neither 
that discovery nor that tenure is yet complete. 

4. Throughout the history of the Church it has 
always appealed to the New Testament, that is, 
to the teaching and example of Christ and His 
Apostles, as the primary and supreme interpreter 
of its nature and its task in the world. To these 
writings, the only writings of the ancient world 
that dominate the life of today, and that with 
ever widening influence, we must go for light upon 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 81 

the specific question before us: What is the relation 
of the Church to the State when the State engages 
in war? First, we must try to discover something 
of the relations in which Christ set Himself towards 
the State, the organized life of the people among 
whom He lived and worked. 2 

In the first place, a close study of the gospels 
reveals the fact that Jesus was involved in a struggle 
with Jewish political parties in the work of estab- 
lishing His community. After vain dealings with 
the Jewish authorities themselves, there was nothing 
for Him to do but to draw to Himself individuals 
whom He gradually moulded into a distinct com- 
munity. He established this community on a 
purely spiritual basis, releasing it from any relation 
to or dependence upon any political party in the 
land. This was a daring thing to do, and it cost 
Him His life. 

But in the second place, a close scrutiny of His 
life and teaching reveals the fact that He was 
consciously creating His community with relation 
to the background of social organization. He did 
not attempt to draw His followers into a desert 
place to form a separate community. He left 
them in their natural human, social, and even 
national relations. His teaching has constant 

2 This subject has been recently investigated in a work called 
"The Political Relations of Christ's Ministry," by Stephen Liberty, 
M.A. (University Press, Oxford), an original and penetrating 
study of the subject. 



82 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

reference of a genial and positive nature to the 
world in which they live, the business life of an 
ordered community, the functions of judges, the 
homes from which His disciples came and to which 
they returned, the institution of the synagogue. 
These and other facts are present as accepted ele- 
ments in the life of His community. He assumes 
that the community will continue in the midst of 
the world, hence His parables of the tares and of 
the good and bad fish brought to shore in the net. 
His very teaching concerning the nature and uses 
of wealth presupposes the continued activity of 
His disciples in their natural social relations. There 
is not the slightest suggestion of a separatist spirit 
in His teaching, so far as the relation of His com- 
munity to the life of the whole people is concerned. 
Rather do we find that He treats as a matter of 
great personal grief the fact that He had been 
rejected by the city of Jerusalem, by the rulers 
and leaders of the people. He even prophesies that 
this rejection will have as one of its results the 
transfer of the power, which they greedily grasped 
and misused, to the hands of an alien power. He 
seems to have given full warning that the failure 
of the leaders of Israel to establish their community 
on purely spiritual lines, would mean not only the 
abolishing of their earthly power in whatever 
minor ways it still survived, but the loss of their 
spiritual destiny in the life of the race. As He 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 83 

looks into the future He foresees the continuance 
of national history, nation fighting with nation, He 
sees His own disciples confronting the hostility of 
the powers that be, brought before governors and 
kings for their allegiance to His authority. 

In the third place, it is of especial interest and 
importance to see how Jesus related Himself with 
the Roman Government, the de facto authority in 
Palestine. First, He avoided identifying His move- 
ment with any form of religious revolutionary 
method. This means that He accepted and under- 
stood that His disciples would live under the au- 
thority of the State in the form of the Roman 
Empire. Next, as we have already pointed out, He 
warned the Jews that the history of States is under 
the governance of God, and that the policy they 
pursued would decide whether He would continue 
them in authority or give that authority to others. 
Further, he accepted the Roman Government by 
entering into friendly relations with and approving 
the faith of men who were in the service of the 
State. People complained that He made friends 
of tax-gatherers, and it is one of the outstanding 
events of His ministry that He blessed the faith 
of the centurion. Now Thomas Barclay, whose 
"Apology" is recognized as one of the leading author- 
ities among the Society of Friends, urges that there 
is no proof that the centurion on exercising this 
faith in Christ and receiving His blessing did not 



84 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

leave the army at once. It is a fact that there is 
no proof, but the negative argument is always 
dangerous; and here it loses sight of the main 
point. For where Jesus was dealing with a man 
or woman leading a wrong life, He always said, 
"Go and sin no more." There is no indication of 
that here. He does not seem to have forbidden 
Zaccheus to continue in the service of the State. 
If the continuance of relations with a military 
authority were sin for the centurion, it would be 
impossible that He should not have acted upon 
the fact. And such action would have been so 
significant that it could not have escaped a place 
in the record. 

And finally we come to the most significant of 
all His sayings in this direction. On one occasion 
the Jewish authorities, seeking to embarrass Him 
in His political relations, to commit Him to a 
declaration that would bring Him under the law, 
challenged Him as to whether it was right to pay 
taxes to the Emperor or not. Now the answer of 
Jesus to this question was not a merely clever 
retort. He did not, as so many have thought, 
elude the question. Rather was the question much 
deeper, much more far-reaching in its significance 
than many of us have supposed, and the answer 
was a much more powerful determinant of history 
than appears on the surface. The purpose of the 
question was to discover whether Jesus would 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 85 

attach Himself to those who were advocating re- 
sistance to the imperial authority. On the other 
hand, if He approved of the payment of taxes, it 
would seem that He was denying the worship of 
the living God. For in those days it had come 
about that the head of the Roman Empire was 
spoken of as Saviour and Lord, and worship was 
rendered to his name. Indeed, long years after this, 
readiness to offer incense on the altar of the Em- 
peror was one of the tests to which the Christian 
was set, and many a man and woman was done to 
death for refusing to worship the Emperor with a 
pinch of incense cast on the flame. As it has been 
said, "Loyalty to the State and worship of the 
deified head of the State became identical in the 
eyes of the law." This was, then, a question whose 
answer must make history for Him to whom they 
addressed it. His reply was, "Pay to Caesar what 
belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to 
God." In each direction there is a duty. The coin 
which He held in His hand was proof that they as 
citizens, as merchantmen, were indebted to Caesar's 
Government for the whole order under which they 
lived and made their living. The tax represented 
their payment for the security, the order, which 
they enjoyed. Let this obligation, therefore, be 
recognized, was the decision of Jesus. Let this 
duty be paid to Caesar as a moral obligation. On 
the other hand, Caesar is not God. There is no 



86 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

duty which any human being owes to Caesar which 
can be or ought to be paid in religious worship 
and adoration. That is due only to the living 
God, Who is over Caesar himself, the Father of 
all mankind. To Him the duty of the spirit must 
be paid in spiritual kind, as the material duty to 
Caesar in material kind. 

In these words Jesus finally set His seal upon 
the doctrine that even those citizens who belonged 
to His own community and were committed to 
the worship of God in spirit and in truth were 
indebted also to the State, and must be committed 
to the payment of all their due obligations to the 
ruler of the day. 

5. The main arguments for pacifism, apart from 
questions of general ethical principle, are based 
upon what are considered to be the explicit teach- 
ings of Christ as given in the Sermon on the Mount. 
Of this discourse as a whole it must be said that 
it is universally regarded as among the most im- 
portant declarations of moral ideals, among the 
most glowing revelations of the divine will, which 
even the Bible contains. Moreover, "In this 
teaching Jesus aimed at being universally intelligible; 
and He was so; for through the Christian centuries 
the kind of life which He here describes has been 
the guiding star of civilization." 3 In spite of the 

3 C. W. Votaw, Hastings's "Dictionary of the Bible," extra 
volume, p. 1. 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 87 

fact that the teaching is intelligible and has illu- 
minated the higher life of men, it has also caused 
infinite perplexity in all generations. What is 
very clear in statement baffles all efforts to carry 
it literally into obedience. 

The three passages which are chiefly appealed 
to in support of the doctrine that under no cir- 
cumstances can a Christian man take part in war 
are Matthew 5:21-26, 38-42, 43-48. In the first 
of these passages Jesus quotes the Old Testament 
law, "Thou shalt not kill," and interprets it as 
involving the deeper law that men must not cherish 
hatred or even scorn of one another. From this 
the conclusion is drawn by some that no follower of 
Jesus can have any part in the killing of a man 
under any circumstances whatsoever. Even capital 
punishment is thus forbidden. It is important to 
note, however, that the correct translation of the 
command in the Old Testament is, "Thou shalt 
do no murder." The command was uttered to a 
people constantly engaged in warfare. They were 
at all times surrounded with enemies who were 
ready to destroy them. Israel could not possibly 
have demobilized, in obedience to the command 
that they should kill no one under any circum- 
stances, without being themselves utterly destroyed. 
When Jesus quotes the law, His development of 
it must be made in line with the original meaning 
and application of that law. 



88 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

In the second passage Jesus refers to an early pre- 
scription, according to which penalties for injury to 
the person were to be proportioned exactly to the 
injury done. This, again, was a merciful piece of 
legislation whose intention was not to drive men to 
revenge, but to make the system of penalties a just 
one. He who lost an eye must not take two eyes 
from his enemy, nor should the State that inflicts 
punishment exaggerate it beyond that which is rea- 
sonable in the circumstances. Jesus goes on to 
deepen the meaning of the command, and does so 
by means of several successive utterances: "I say 
unto you, Resist not him that is evil: but whoso- 
ever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him 
the other also. And if any man would go to law 
with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have 
thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee 
to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him that 
asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of 
thee turn not thou away" (Matt. 5: 39-42). 

It is of great interest to note in passing that in 
v. 41, "Whosoever shall compel thee" would better 
be translated, "Whosoever shall impress thee." The 
word is a technical term, referring to a custom of 
the Roman Government, one prevalent for many 
ages in the East, of compelling anyone within their 
reach to aid in the transportation of military bag- 
gage. Jesus seems to say that if the Government 
compels a private citizen to serve it in this way, 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 89 

he must be willing not merely to obey under com- 
pulsion, but to have a good heart in the doing of 
it. Oppressive as it can be made, and often was 
made, this custom must be accepted as a service of 
the State. 

But the central words of the passage around 
which controversy has raged are in that utterance, 
"Resist not him that is evil." Are there no limits 
to that apparently limitless, absolute injunction? 
Does it mean that no man may exercise the office 
of a judge or aid the State in the arrest of evil- 
doers? Does it mean that no Christian man can be 
a policeman or a lawyer who deals with criminal 
affairs? Or still further, does it mean that a man 
must not resist even in words, since words some- 
times cut more deeply than swords? Did Jesus 
Himself or did He not resist evil when he denounced 
the traffickers in the Temple and drove them 
forth? These are questions which must be an- 
swered by those who apply the command against 
the exercise of force in a Christian State, or by 
those who specially apply it to the one form of 
resisting him who is evil, which is called war. 

In the third passage, Jesus says, "Love your 
enemies." And it is in relation to this passage 
that, for example, Thomas Barclay, the famous 
theologian of the Society of Friends, has argued, 
"If a magistrate be truly a Christian or desire to 
be so, he ought himself in the first place to obey 



9 o CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

the command of his Master, saying, Love your 
enemies and then he cannot command us to kill 
them." 

What does our Lord mean when He commands 
us to love our enemies? It is not He who has put 
these words into immediate connection with the 
command, "Thou shalt not kill," but only those 
who interpret the words as having that application. 
And no doubt when we understand that the word 
killing means murder, the command has immediate 
application. Indeed, one of His own apostles long 
afterwards echoed the two passages in one great 
utterance, "Whosoever hateth his brother is a 
murderer" (i John 3: 15). 

We must remember, however, as Dr. Horton has 
so well pointed out recently, that in ordinary usage 
men make a deep and fundamental distinction be- 
tween murder and the act of a soldier in battle. 
"The distinction between killing and murder is 
quite familiar to our minds, as it is familiar to every 
maker of laws. . . . We realize the distinction in- 
stinctively. . . . When from a personal motive, and 
actuated by a personal passion, a man kills another, 
that is murder. . . . When a soldier kills an enemy 
in battle, he is not actuated by any personal feel- 
ing at all, he has no personal animosity; he is simply 
carrying out a command which is laid upon him 
by the State to which he belongs. . . . While we 

4 Barclay, "Apology," Proposition 15. 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 91 

entirely exonerate the soldier when he kills, we of 
course recognize that if that soldier kills a comrade 
or kills anyone else, he is immediately proceeded 
against as a murderer, and if he is found guilty, 
he is condemned to death. . . . The peculiar gravamen 
of the charge that we bring against the German 
Government is that it has obliterated the distinction 
between murder and the killing that is recognized 
as lawful killing in war." 5 

There are many questions which might be asked 
of those who believe that the command, Thou 
shalt love thine enemy, is to be taken in the sense 
suggested. Does it mean that the enemy who has 
done wrong is not to be condemned? Does it mean 
that no effort is to be made to punish him? Does 
it mean that the State is to abdicate its right to 
deal with any man who acts as an enemy of other 
men? Does it mean that the citizens of the State 
are guilty of resisting the laws of Jesus if they 
support its action in restraining the enemies of 
law and order? 

On the whole subject of the significance of the 
Sermon on the Mount with especial relation to 
these three passages the following observations 
must be made: 

In the first place, it will not do to forget that 
political and social background which we have 

6 Robert F. Horton, D.D., in "Christ and the World at War," 
pp. 74-76. 



92 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

already tried to understand as we watch Jesus 
forming His new community. When He launches 
this community into history, He knows it is into 
the history of a world organized into human govern- 
ments. He is creating the Church on spiritual 
foundations. He is interpreting the meaning of 
life as it shall be seen when various social organ- 
izations are created out of its inmost and divine 
spirit. But He does not attempt to lay down 
prescriptions for the exact manner in which His 
disciples are to deal with the political situation of 
their own day. He does not say how the mem- 
bers of His community, and the community as a 
whole, shall be related to the successive problems 
which must arise as it enters into the wider life 
of the world and into contact with all the other 
institutions of humanity. 

In the second place, they are right who have 
uttered the startling opinion that literal obedience 
to all parts of the Sermon on the Mount would "dis- 
solve" every government and nation in the world. 
We need only to look quite frankly at the rest of 
the Sermon in order to see the truth of this opinion. 
Literal obedience to the outward phraseology would 
actually cause the death or suicide of one institu- 
tion after another. For instance, the sayings con- 
cerning wealth (Matt. 6: 19, 20), if taken an pied 
de la lettre would destroy all the business in the 
world. Even Jesus' own company of twelve dis- 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 93 

ciples would not have been able to use Judas as its 
treasurer and give him the bag to carry. A literal 
obedience to the command that we should take no 
careful thought about food or drink or clothing 
would reduce us to savagery. Communities have 
arisen that tried to apply literally the full meaning 
or suggestion of the passage concerning the relation 
of the sexes (Matt. 5:27-32), and have attempted 
to live in perpetual celibacy. This proceeding 
would be the suicide of the race in the most com- 
plete fashion possible. Literal obedience to the 
passage concerning almsgiving (Matt. 6: 2, 3), 
would make it impossible for anyone to subscribe 
to any society lest someone should know that he 
had given something. Literal obedience to the 
command about the manner of prayer (Matt. 6: 
5, 6) would mean the abolition of public worship, 
and some people have actually taken this literally. 
Literal obedience to the command, "Judge not," 
would shut down the training of children, the con- 
demnation of the wrongdoer, even the commanding 
of an army, and abolish every court of law. It is 
no exaggeration to say that there is exactly the 
same amount of reason for translating these in- 
junctions into actual conduct as those which deal 
with murder and the resistance of evil and the 
treatment of enemies. 6 



6 The high-souled English Quaker, Thomas Hodgkin, the famous 
historian, wrote on this subject: "I also feel that if War is abso- 



94 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

The real solution of the problem of the Sermon 
on the Mount must not be one which is created 
merely to satisfy the selective impulses of this 
group or that group, but one which interprets the 
purpose of Jesus Christ throughout the whole dis- 
course. It must rest upon an understanding of 
the method which He employs, the spirit which 
He is putting into the world, and the effect of that 
spirit upon the history of men in their relations 
with society and the State, and even with the 
natural forces on which our physical existence rests. 

6. Here I must refer to an opinion held by some 
that if only a nation would sacrifice itself rather 
than fight for its existence, it would be fulfilling 
the will of Christ. And some even have the au- 
dacity, shall I say the blindness, to parallel such 
an act by a national State with the self-sacrifice 
of Christ on the Cross. 

Two essential facts are entirely forgotten when 
men speak thus of the sacrifice of Christ as an 
example which ought to have been followed by 
Belgium. In the first place, the act of Christ made 
no impression on the Romans who put him to death. 
Nor did the Jewish authorities repent of their deed, 

lutely condemned under all circumstances by the Sermon on the 
Mount, Business, as we understand it, is equally condemned. . . . 
Except on some such principle of interpretation as I have sug- 
gested, I fear that my forty years of banking life are quite as clearly 
astray to the commands of Christ as Lord Roberts' forty years' 
campaign in India." Mrs. Creichton's "Life of Thomas Hodgkin," 
p. 241. 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 95 

with all about it that made them a hundredfold 
more guilty than the imperial rulers. Christ's 
sacrificial death became a moral force first of all 
to the men who already knew and trusted and 
loved Him. The Cross did no good to any of His 
enemies till after His resurrection. That event 
proved to every one who believed in it that the 
sacrifice must have been deliberate, that the Son 
of God need not have died, that an Empire could 
not have crushed Him. Then its meaning and 
glory broke upon their minds and subdued their 
hearts, "and a great company of the priests were 
obedient to the faith" (Acts 6:7). Without the 
story of the resurrection Christ's use of non-resistance 
could have appeared only as "passivity, weakness, 
cowardice, or folly," 7 and could have awakened 
of itself no response of faith, admiration, and love. 
Easter Day made Good Friday. 

Mere self-sacrifice is mere suicide unless some- 
thing for which it was made survives. The sub- 
lime act of Regulus when he went back from Rome 
to Carthage to die, was only justified and only 
became a moral force because it was a witness to 
the continued life and energy of that Roman honor 
in whose name he died. But if a State should at- 
tempt the sacrifice, it would resemble neither 

7 These words are taken from a keen and illuminating discussion 
of non-resistance from the psychologist's point of view in "Human 
Nature and Its Remaking," by W. E. Hocking. The chapter on 
"Pugnacity" should be read by all students of the ethics of war. 



96 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

Regulus nor Christ. Not Regulus, because the 
honor which belonged to it in the protection of its 
people is itself dead, ignominiously surrendered to 
brute power. Not Christ, because the State which 
has consented to be destroyed has no resurrection 
except through a later war. Luxemburg may live 
again, but it will not be through the grace of a 
stricken conscience in the Kaiser, as he sees her 
prone at his feet. Her life can be restored only 
by the sacrifice of others in war. 

7. We must pass to a brief but instructive con- 
sideration of the interpretation of Christ's teaching 
which is given to us by the Apostle Paul in the 
famous passage, Romans 13:1-10. The Apostle 
Paul always had some very definite reason for 
the successive paragraphs in his epistles; and 
this passage, like the words of Jesus about the tax 
payable to Caesar, must have been addressed to 
a particular situation in the Christian community 
at Rome. It is certain that there must have been 
a group of people in that church who were inclined 
to withdraw themselves as completely as possible 
from responsibilities to the State. They may have 
attempted to carry into the Church the spirit of 
the Pharisaic party at Jerusalem, with whom Jesus 
dealt so drastically in His own ministry on the 
earth. It is to such persons that the Apostle sends 
this powerful and far-reaching instruction which 
has no parallel elsewhere in his writings. There are 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 97 

three fundamental statements made which are rele- 
vant to our present subject. 

In the first place, he says that the powers that be — 
that is, the actual governing authority of a nation — 
"are ordained of God." He goes on to explain what 
he means by this — rulers exist simply to secure the 
community against evil-doers, and by their authority 
they encourage healthy-minded people to do that 
which is right. "He is a minister of God to thee 
for good." This deep-seeing assertion is the justi- 
fication, for a Christian believer, of the position 
that the State is a divine institutiom. 

In the second place, the State which thus acts 
as "a minister of God," "an avenger of wrath to 
him that doeth evil," "bears the sword," and that, 
he says, "not in vain" or "for nothing." Whether 
the Apostle Paul today would defend capital pun- 
ishment or not is an idle question. In this passage 
he recognized it, for when men punished with the 
sword in those days, they did not use the flat of it. 
For him that was no transgression of the com- 
mand, "Thou shalt do no murder." Nor was it a 
transgression of the command that we must love 
our enemies, if for conscience' sake we put our- 
selves under the guardianship of the State, which 
holds the sword. 

In the third place, he re-echoes the words of 
Jesus concerning the paying of taxes, and insists 
that this must be done because those to whom they 



98 , CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

must be paid are "ministers of God's service." 
How complete the loyalty of the individual citizen 
must be to the State which protects him is summed 
up in the powerful phrases of verse 7, "Render 
to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; 
custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor 
to whom honor." Then he passes on, apparently 
without any sense of break with what he has already 
been saying, to urge upon his readers thorough 
obedience to the sublime law of love which the 
Saviour had brought into the world. 

This teaching of the Apostle Paul is amply 
illustrated by his own life and example. He in- 
herited the rights of a Roman citizen, and was 
proud of the privileges which thus became his as 
he moved over the world. When he was illegally 
punished at Philippi, he did not scruple to warn 
the breakers of the law that they might be pun- 
ished; when he pled his case before Festus and before 
Agrippa, he stood on his rights, he appealed from 
the Jewish persecutors to Roman justice. When 
at the court in Caesarea he had no fair trial, he 
claimed the supreme privilege and rights of Roman 
citizenship and appealed directly to the Emperor 
himself. Throughout the whole long and bitter 
experience of nearly five years' imprisonment, we 
know of no word uttered by him which can be 
interpreted as disloyalty, or indicated that because 
he was a Christian man he ought to avoid his 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 99 

responsibilities, or forego his rights as a Roman 
citizen. 

It would be foolish in the light of all history 
to conclude that the Apostle Paul in another age 
and when the Church had won its way to larger 
influence would have refused to take any part in 
the improvement of the form of government. 
When he says "the powers that be are ordained 
of God," he cannot be interpreted as binding the 
Church forever to the ideal of the State as it existed 
under the Emperor of that day. It is the State 
of any day which, so far as it sums up and cares 
for the life of a nation, is the ordinance of God at 
that time. It is human, and therefore character- 
ized by the frailties of humanity; it is human, and 
therefore liable to change and subject to improve- 
ment; it is human, and therefore through human 
sources must its continual correction of evil and 
strengthening of righteousness be secured. It is 
in this very task of continual criticism and im- 
provement of the methods of the State that the 
spirit of Jesus Christ has had such enormous and 
manifest influence through the Christian centuries. 
Due to the Church is the modern hatred of war, 
the modern attempts to moralize its methods, to 
limit the scope of its terror and destruction, to 
define the conditions under which alone a people 
may enter with a clear conscience and with the 
spirit of God into warfare. All the discussions of 



ioo CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

the hour on every hand are in their sum total a 
glorious witness to the influence of the Sermon 
on the Mount and the spirit of Christ, in every 
form of its manifestation, upon the history of the 
nations, the States, the wars of the world. 

8. It is not, then, through the forsaking of duty, 
the casting down of self-respect, the ignoring of 
wrongdoing, it is not through the refusal to execute 
righteousness at the cost of right, that the Church 
has secured these grand results. It is through deeper, 
slower, more patient, more divine ways that the 
body of Christ, which is the Church, is acting 
upon the human mass which is the world, and 
bringing all the nations into that new brotherhood 
which He alone has made possible, and which can 
be realized at last only when He is universally 
accepted and obeyed as "the Ruler of the kings of 
the earth." 

The very obligation set forth by the Apostle 
to unite oneself with the government of the hour, 
as a religious act, gives us the right to inquire whether 
the actual wielders of power at any one time are 
truly carrying out the divine intent of the State 
as "a minister of God for good." When the rulers 
of the hour fail to administer justice, fail even in 
their conception of public right, they unfit them- 
selves for fulfilling the ordinance of God. How 
and when and by what means a change is to be 
effected, no one can say. There is no general rule. 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 101 

But it may be said that changes are always go- 
ing on in the very form of government, and that 
inevitably every Christian man is not only free, 
but under religious obligation to give his influence 
to those changes which are directed towards the 
better fulfillment by the State of its fundamental 
task as the protector of right, justice, and freedom, 
of that moral order which is the will of God. 

It is here that the function of the Church in rela- 
tion to the State comes into clear view. History 
warns us with a loud voice against the intrusion 
of the Church as an institution into the field of 
politics where good men and true may differ from 
one another. It is as dangerous for the Church 
officially to seek coercion of the State as for the 
State to seek coercion of the Church. But the 
Church cannot exist, cannot do its own proper 
work thoroughly, without continuously acting upon 
the moral ideals of the nation, and quickening the 
public conscience. Its own work involves the 
pursuit of justice, charity, and freedom among its 
own members. To understand and value these, 
to receive them from God, to value them with the 
whole heart and soul, to practice them in the whole 
habit of life of the sacred, the beloved community, 
this is the purpose and vital work of the Church. 
This is the purpose and effect of all its worship, 
instruction, and philanthropic endeavor. But when 
this is thoroughly done, the entire community must 



102 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

be illuminated, aroused, directed, inspired to pur- 
sue the same great principles of life within the 
whole sphere of the State's responsibility. The 
ethical history of the modern world is a witness 
to the power of the Christian community thus 
exercised. Modern democracy was born in the 
Christian community of the post-reformation period; 
the emancipation of the slave was born in the 
hearts of individual Christian men, who by their 
fire and persistence convinced whole nations; the 
modern treatment of prisoners is the result of the 
work of innumerable Christians; the ideals of uni- 
versal and compulsory education were given to 
the modern world by Martin Luther and John 
Knox, nourished by the Christian communities 
which they inspired; the task of uplifting vast 
masses of mankind in non-Christian lands was not 
primarily undertaken by the governments of vic- 
torious and civilized lands, but by the missionaries 
of the cross. That the Church has failed in many 
directions, allowing itself to be shackled by the 
sins of selfishness, misused wealth, and prejudice, 
the members of the Church are the first to com- 
plain. But what has been done in the last three 
centuries to spread the light of justice, charity, 
and liberty in our world is due in the main, directly 
and indirectly, to the pervasive influence of all 
that has been sincere, generous, and sacrificial in 
the life of the communities of Christ in all lands. 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 103 

In the very matter of war it is the Christian spirit 
which has most influenced human thought. The 
fact that aggressive Germany must prove to her 
own people that she did not begin this war, the 
very fact that she must write elaborate arguments 
to prove that ruthless methods are necessary or 
conducive to victory and therefore right and com- 
mendable (even when outwardly horrible and 
deplorable) proves that a higher spirit is in the 
world today than of old. If today the conscience 
of Germany as a whole can be appeased only by 
proof that their war is defensive, it is because the 
Sermon on the Mount, the Cross, the thirteenth 
chapter of Romans, have combined to make ag- 
gressive war appear as it never did before, to the 
human conscience everywhere, ungodly and in- 
human. It is significant also that the vision of a 
world-wide league of nations, of universal standards 
of justice between nation and nation, of freedom 
for all peoples to direct their own internal affairs, 
is not cherished or advocated most convincedly and 
earnestly by those nations, whether autocratic or 
democratic, where the work of the Church has least 
effect on the governments, but in those regions 
where the authority of the Spirit of Christ is most 
openly and generally obeyed by those who mould 
opinion and direct the affairs of State. 

9. The final question is whether this doctrine, 
that a citizen is under obligation to support the 



io 4 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

State actively in its exercise of justice upon all 
criminals, including an invading army, does not 
annul the Christian witness and the great doctrine 
of love. Sometimes the position is explained by 
an appeal to what is called "the omnipotence of 
love." It is held that merely to go on loving, and 
to claim no right for the individual and the State 
to punish wrongdoing, will in the end win the whole 
world to right doing. It may seem very hard to 
speak of this as a mere chimera; but the argument 
almost forces this or a similar term upon the mind. 
The abstract phrase, "the omnipotence of love," 
like the abstract phrase, "might is right," or "war 
is a biological blessing," is open to all the dangers 
which haunt abstractions when they are applied 
with logical consistency to the concrete facts of 
human experience. 

When we speak of love, we speak of the attitude 
of one rational soul to another. If we speak of the 
omnipotence of love, we mean that this attitude, 
when it is one of benevolence and self-sacrifice, 
has an inherent power completely to change the 
spirit and will of a hostile man. When brought in 
this way to the concrete, the phrase is less im- 
pressive, less convincing. When, for convenience* 
sake, we speak of the omnipotence of love, we may 
indeed acknowledge that there is a range of life 
where it is to be accepted as a great truth. The 
love of God is omnipotent intensively, inwardly, in 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 105 

relation to the life, character, and destiny of the 
individual man who accepts it and sets himself 
to live in its light, drinking into his very soul its 
infinite power. All our hope of salvation depends 
on the omnipotence of the divine love in this sense 
and when it is, as Paul puts it, "shed abroad into 
our hearts." But it is nowhere affirmed in the 
Scriptures that love is omnipotent extensively. Not 
even of the love of God is it guaranteed that it will 
finally subdue every human will. Rather does the 
New Testament hold out the most solemn warnings 
that it is possible for even a finite will so to identify 
itself with evil as to lose the very power to appre- 
ciate, to receive, and to be saved by that love. 

Further, the display of love extensively or uni- 
versally, without discrimination or action concerning 
wrongdoing, is to condone sin. It is to establish 
crime and spread moral disorder. There is no range 
of human experience, where benevolence towards 
wrongdoing can be exercised apart from the in- 
fliction of punishment and the defense of right, 
without moral danger to all concerned. Every 
act of forgiveness, if it is to be of healthful result, 
must be exercised only towards the penitent, and 
no penitence is sincere which does not confess the 
justice of punishment, or which rebels against the 
law that exacts penalty. 8 

8 "What pugnacity wants is to make the man over; it wants to 
create the conditions for the free self-rejection of the evil. And 



106 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

An extension of this argument confronts us with 
the question whether it is possible for a man sin- 
cerely to support the State when it exercises force 
upon wrongdoers, and yet obey the far-reaching 
and glorious command of Jesus that we must love 
our enemies. It is obvious that love and pity are 
not impossible even when men punish criminals, 
any more than when parents punish children for 
the maintenance of right in the home. It is also 
obvious, and the history of the Church has gloriously 
illustrated it, that it is possible for Christian men 
to manifest love towards their persecutors even 
when these put them to torture and death. It is 
only in relation to the act of the State when it 
would punish an invading force by warfare that 
the question becomes most searching. 

In the first place, it must be remembered that 
there are many instances in which Christian men 
have fought against an enemy and have borne 
witness, and proved it, that they cherish no hatred 
of the individual opposed to them. If he dropped 
wounded they immediately ran to his succor, and 
did all they could to alleviate his pain and to restore 
his life. The British soldier of whom an authentic 
story is told, who, having struck down his German 
opponent, immediately tried to ease his position 



for this act of creation the absolute justice of 'Love your enemies' 
is a necessary demand." W. E. Hocking, "Human Nature and 
Its Remaking," p. 351. 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 107 

and to share with him his own meager supply of 
water, and asked him whether he could do more 
for him, manifested the spirit of love. The act 
of his opponent was even more sublime, when he 
took from his pocket an English Testament, and 
in English said to the man who had struck him 
down, "I am dying. This book has been to me 
the water of life. I pray that it may be the same 
to you." This is not hatred, but it is war. It is 
not mere sentiment, yet it is love. It is the gleam 
that falls upon the murk of battle and the shame 
of war from the heart of the Eternal Father of both 
those men. The British officer who could not en- 
dure the sight of a German officer wounded and 
writhing on the wires, who leaped over the top, 
took the man from the wires, carried him across 
to the German trenches, and gave him to his friends, 
was acting in love. The German officer who took 
from his own breast the Iron Cross and pinned it 
on the breast of that English officer, was at least 
revealing his sense of admiration for the generous 
love of his enemy. In this very war, amid all that 
is sordid and hateful, amid all passion and revenge- 
fulness of spirit, thousands of such events have 
occurred which prove that obedience to the law 
of Jesus, strange and illogical as it may seem, 
baffling to the cold reason, is yet not only possible, 
but extensively actual on the field of battle itself. 
People who believe that it adds to the efficiency 



io8 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

of the fighter to get him into the mood of passionate 
hatred, forget that hatred originally, as an animal 
instinct, was born of fear. When hatred fails of 
its purpose, it is fear which springs up as its active 
substitute. Drill sergeants who, as I have heard, 
shout at their men practicing the bayonet on dummy 
figures, "Hate him, hate him," are running a great 
risk. They are in danger of creating a loss of morale 
if their men suffer temporary defeat. Hate may 
fall back into its matrix, which is fear. On the 
other hand, those who think love cannot go into 
war forget that love is not pure love unless it has 
in it the capacity for moral indignation and that 
love itself withers unless the indignation is made 
effective. This is abundantly evident in private 
life, where no man would allow love to make him 
fellowship with works and workers of darkness. 
The same deep principle obtains in the world 
field and in national life. Love, which burns with 
moral indignation at the diabolical deeds of Ger- 
many, will lose its divine quality unless it find a 
powerful way of making its indignation effective. 
The only way that can be discovered is the crushing 
of German armies. 

10. But the final test which Jesus gives for the 
love of our enemies is the will to pray for them. 
He is thinking of prayer in its most real, sincere, 
and energetic form. The man who can in the very 
depths of his heart pray to God for the supreme 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 109 

blessing of his foe has conquered hate and ful- 
filled the law of love to the uttermost. Can we 
pray for Germany? 

One who sincerely believes that this is not only 
possible, but obligatory for all Christian men in 
Christian lands, must be very careful to define 
the conditions of such prayer. It cannot be sin- 
cere if it be untrue to the situation. It cannot 
be earnest unless the situation and the meaning of 
the prayer are both clearly seen. In the first place, 
no one who believes that the German Government, 
and the people so far as they have shared the spirit 
and purpose of the Government, has committed a 
colossal crime against humanity can wish or pray 
for anything less than that the German army should 
be defeated. The German people must forever 
be compelled to resign their mad and wicked dream 
of universal dominion, of supremacy over the na- 
tions of the world. Moreover, if Germany is guilty, 
then it is a prerequisite for the moral order of the 
world that Germany should be punished by defeat. 
Sincere prayer for Germany must begin with that. 

In the second place, if Germany is thus deeply 
guilty and unaware, if her statesmen and her armies 
have broken every law of honor and decency, as 
they have, it follows as day follows night that 
Germany can never come to her best, cannot re- 
ceive the full divine blessing upon her national 
life, until she becomes aware of the moral repro- 



no CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

bation of the world. 9 She must awake to see the 
guilt which rests upon her, which all the world 
sees resting upon her name, staining deep her record. 
No sincere prayer for Germany can stop short of 
an intense spiritual desire that that nation may 
become aware of the position in which her rulers 
have placed her before God's holy will and man's 
conscience. It is true that this view must be taken 
with the utmost humility by the Christian citizens 
of other lands. They know the moral iniquities 
which obtain among themselves, they know what 
wrongs their own governments have done in the 
past, what sins are spread broadcast among their 
own people, they know what mixture of motives 
has entered into the share which they take in this 
war. These things they will no less earnestly and 
seriously confess before God than the confession 
which they make of the sin of Germany. Neverthe- 
less, as imperfect men everywhere have to deal 
with the holiest things, and to pass judgment on 
open crime and vice, so in this case. A sin more 
flagrant than that of any other government has 
been committed, a criminal will has been adopted 
or acquiesced in by a whole people, which has done 
greater wrong to the race than ever the world saw. 



9 "War is not to be understood as necessarily a negation of the 
principle of Christianity; a just war is an attempt to create the 
conditions under which the opponent is disposed to listen to the 
language of the still small voice." W. E. Hocking, "Human Nature 
and Its Remaking," p. 351. 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH in 

Germany must herself see that, ere her own con- 
science can be cleansed and her future place in 
history as one of high honor and achievement can 
be recovered. For this the Christian man may pray. 
And lastly, prayer for Germany will include an 
intense desire that the people of that Empire may 
in true penitence of national spirit resolve to cleanse 
themselves of this wrong, to change the very depths 
of their purpose, if necessary to overthrow their 
system of government, which has proved itself 
the destroyer of moral order. These acts must 
be taken openly, whether they come up through a 
spread of the principles of their Social Democracy, 
or through the establishment of a thoroughly 
representative and responsible government. They 
must include secured guarantees for a period 
of years that international obligations shall be 
observed. If these changes rest on a new will 
to peace, proved by cordial entrance into a league 
of nations for the enforcement of peace, they will 
be witness to the world of the penitence of a 
people. What lies beyond these outward acts in 
the inner soul of the nation, how various classes 
relate themselves to it, is all beyond the eyes of 
man. For us this will be taken as proof enough 
of a true penitence. Sorrow will accompany it, 
and humiliation, that is most certain; long the 
burden of these years and the years that prepared 
for them will rest upon the conscience and agon- 



ii2 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

ize the heart of the best people in the Empire, 
as doubtless they do among many German Chris- 
tians already. It is this that we may pray for. 
In doing so we are petitioning the Throne of Grace 
for the highest blessing which even God can confer 
upon our enemies of the German Empire. 

This is to pray for Germany, and thus to pray 
is not only within the reach of every Christian 
man: it is one of the most solemn duties of his life. 

II. In view of all that we have said regarding 
the State and the Church, certain very important 
questions arise which may be summarized in the 
following brief statement. How shall men act 
who, first, are in fellowship with Christ and seeking 
to manifest His spirit; and, second, are also under 
obligation to the State to maintain its true func- 
tions with sincerity and loyalty, when the State 
orders them to take part in its work of punishing 
evil-doers, whether these are of the criminal class 
among their own citizens, or of the criminals con- 
stituted by an invading army making an unjust 
war? In answer to this, the following statements 
may perhaps prove to be sufficient. 

In the first place, the most obvious duty of the 
Christian man is so to live and teach and share in 
the life of the Christian community that the sins 
from which all crime and the gravest crime of all, 
namely an aggressive and robber war, arise, shall 
be rebuked. He must seek to use his influence as a 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 113 

citizen to remove all conditions of thought and life, 
and all forms of social and industrial wrong, which 
produce their fruits in crime. This, as we have 
seen, is the true and national function of the Church, 
and in the exercise of that function every follower 
of Christ must exert his and her full personal in- 
fluence. 

The second, and equally obvious, duty of the 
Christian citizen is that he shall stand by the 
State, that he shall be prepared to support it and 
share in its divinely ordained task of maintaining 
the basic moral order on which the structure of 
civilized life is erected. The problem becomes 
acute in discussion with pacifists at this very point. 
Does a situation arise when the law that I shall 
stand by the State in the exercise of its true func- 
tions comes into conflict with my duty to obey 
Jesus Christ? Clearly such a case might arise if 
a man were ordered to do an injustice to a fellow 
citizen who is innocent of transgression. Such 
cases have occurred in abundance when the State, 
under erroneous views of its rights, persecuted its 
citizens for the holding of certain religious beliefs. 
Such an event is illustrated in the secular sphere 
by the action of those British officers who refused 
to fight against the Americans in the war of the 
Revolution. These men gave up their commissions, 
cut short their careers, rather than assist their 
government in the performance of an act which 



ii 4 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

they considered to be obviously unjust and unwise. 
But does such a case occur when the State orders 
the service of its citizens to put down actual and 
undeniable crime, to repel attacks upon the moral 
order and the very existence of the State? Most 
pacifists are quite clear about the matter when it 
is restricted to the work of the judge on the bench, 
the policeman on his beat; they object only when 
the work of the soldier is under consideration. 
I trust we have made it clear in the preceding 
argument that the work of the soldier in the only 
kind of war which a Christian can defend, namely 
a defensive war, is simply an extension of the work 
of the judge, the policeman, and the executors of 
justice. It is a case of completely broken logic, 
therefore, when one fails to see the essential identity 
at this point of the functions of the courts and of 
the Army; and of the obligation which they impose 
upon a loyal citizen. 

As we have pointed out in an earlier chapter, 10 
the function of the State is to exercise force, the 
function of the Church is to exercise the spirit of 
sacrifice. I venture to illustrate the operation of 
these two principles from the somewhat unusual 
experience of one man, my father, John Mackenzie 
of South Africa. 

In the late seventies of the last century, John 
Mackenzie was working as a missionary at Kur- 

10 See above, p. 49. 



THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 115 

uman in South Bechuanaland. A threatening 
movement arose over a large part of South Africa 
among the natives, who resolved to clear the white 
man out of those regions. They began by murder- 
ing isolated traders and farmers, and a large force 
marched on to Kuruman to kill the missionaries. 
A number of missionaries and traders took refuge 
in the strong buildings of the Moffat Institution, 
of which John Mackenzie was the head. The 
refugees pled with him to appeal to the British 
government in Cape Colony for assistance. He 
declined to do so, on the ground that when he be- 
came a missionary he took his life and the lives of 
his family in his hand, knowing the risk. He did 
this in the cause of the Gospel, whose law is sacri- 
fice. To prove that it was not fear that guided 
his policy, or weakness of will, he walked out alone 
and unarmed, one day, into the camp of the native 
warriors; and discussed with them the wickedness 
of their actions, and the folly of their plans. In 
this way he fulfilled the meaning of non-resistance 
as Professor Hocking analyzes it when he says: 
"The forgiving, or non-resisting, or enemy-loving 
attitude has its entire justification in the 'new 
idea' which it conveys to the wrong-doer. It is 
a language; and the whole virtue of a language is 
that it is understood." u "So sprach" — the Spirit 
of Christ, not of Nietzsche. A few years later some 
11 W. E. Hocking, "Human Nature and Its Remaking," p. 352. 



n6 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

Transvaal Boers, contrary to a clear covenant, 
broke over their Western boundary, and began to 
harry the natives among whom the foundations 
of a Christian civilization had been laboriously 
laid by Moffat, Livingstone, Mackenzie, and their 
fellow-missionaries. The native farms were seized, 
their cattle driven off. They were threatened with 
oppression and serfdom. The British Government 
sent an expeditionary force of five thousand men 
under that good Christian and splendid admin- 
istrator, the late Sir Charles Warren, as Special 
Commissioner. He asked John Mackenzie to go 
with him as Civil Commissioner to assist him in 
dealing with both the natives and the Boers. With- 
out hesitation John Mackenzie accepted the task 
and Sir Charles Warren in his dispatches and 
reports bore witness to the invaluable work of the 
missionary. 

In each of these cases John Mackenzie acted in 
the light of his singularly clear conscience. In the 
one as a representative of the Church he Was ready 
for the extreme of sacrifice. In the other as a 
servant of his State he was ready to share in the 
use of force. The final aim of each course of 
conduct was the same, and in each that aim was 
measurably secured. 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WORLD WAR 



CHAPTER VI 
ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WORLD WAR 

A. The Aims and Methods of Germany 

It is our duty now to see more closely how the 
principles which have been worked out in the preced- 
ing pages can be applied to the present situation. 

No event so great as the World War can be due 
to causes that are merely local and occasional. 
Its sources must lie wide and deep in the history 
of Europe and the world. It is not our duty here 
to investigate all the origins of the catastrophe. 
We are concerned, for the purposes of this ethical 
discussion, with the very definite, narrow field 
presented by the position and purpose of Germany. 

I. In the first place, it is written forever in his- 
tory that Germany began the World War. It is 
in vain for her authorities to cast the blame now 
upon France, now upon Russia, now upon England, 
or upon all three combined, as if they had con- 
certed to launch the bolt. It was Germany which 
began the war; and there are many Germans of 
first-rate importance who openly acknowledge the 
fact. Abundance of literature written before the 

119 



120 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

war, published broadcast in the German Empire, 
bore witness to the hardening will of the nation 
preparing for war. Works like those of von 
Bernhardi, of Tannenberg, von Claussewitz, and 
many others, reveal the energy with which the people 
were being instructed, organized, fired with enthu- 
siasm for the supreme test of their power and con- 
summation of their ambition. 

No doubt it is unjust to place the full respon- 
sibility upon any one man, even the Kaiser, when 
we consider the last steps and the last fatal act. 
No one man could hurl an empire into such a strug- 
gle unless he represented the mind of at least a 
large part of the population, the will of their prin- 
cipal leaders; unless his act had been prepared for 
through many years of history and seemed justified 
to the great majority by their experience and the 
position of their nation in the midst of others. It 
is true that when Prussia put herself at the head 
of the German Empire she found herself in course 
of time ringed round with powerful nations which 
might prove hostile to her if occasion for hostility 
arose. It is true also that the Balkan wars had 
opened a new day in the history of the Slavic 
world, and that the silent, constant, irresistible 
movement of Slavic life westward across Europe 
was, and is, destined profoundly to transform the 
life of the older nations of the continent. Their 
invasion of Germany was much deeper than we 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 121 

realize. It is true also, as we have said before, 
that some sympathy may be felt for the German 
mind when it discovered that the subjects of the 
Kaiser who forsook the Fatherland did not go to 
their own colonies in Africa, but to settle under 
other civilized governments in North and South 
America and elsewhere. Germany felt herself, 
therefore, hemmed in on a territory becoming 
increasingly inadequate and unable to gain new 
regions eligible for colonization without overthrow- 
ing and annexing territories already under the 
sway of other States. 

It was this situation which opened the eyes of 
the Kaiser nearly twenty-five years ago to the 
fact that what Germany required, in order to be- 
come in the largest sense of the word a world power, 
was a navy strong enough to compete successfully 
with the most powerful navy in the world — this, 
on the theory that two powerful navies cannot 
exist in the world at the same time and fulfil their 
functions each for its own country without coming 
to war with one another. Hence her claim that 
"the freedom of the seas" did not exist so long as 
the major part of the seas was guarded by the 
navy of the British Empire. The fact that this 
navy never interfered with the course of commerce, 
that the harbors of that Empire were all open on 
equal terms to all the nations of the world, as 
well as to the ships of the British dominions, was 



122 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

not a fact that conveyed any meaning to the Ger- 
man mind. Freedom was not freedom unless it 
meant dominion; and if even in name or ultimate 
resources the British navy held dominion, no other 
navy in the German sense had freedom. There- 
fore the only way for Germany to secure freedom 
of the seas was to secure dominion for herself. 
There is no other conceivable sense in which the 
German cry for freedom of the seas can be under- 
stood. 

The Kaiser by his naval policy prepared long 
years before the event for the great war of conquest. 
No doubt he began his reign by proclaiming himself 
a "prince of peace," partly to allay the nervous 
fears of his own people, who were not yet educated 
to grasp those ideals which early stirred in his 
restless and ambitious mind. But he used with 
supreme skill the very work of preparation as the 
means for carrying on that education. As his power 
grew, he tested and enjoyed the taste of it. He 
found that other nations were increasingly over- 
awed by the magnitude of his military and naval 
achievements. Time after time France and Great 
Britain, Russia and Italy, were confronted with 
challenges before which they seemed to quail. 
And each diplomatic victory, which was always 
secured by a rattle of the scabbard, made his con- 
fidence grow. It was the Moroccan affair which 
proved to him that the limit of patience was being 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 123 

reached, and that the day must come when his 
gage of battle would be taken up by one or more 
of his rivals. This hastened and intensified the 
process of preparation. The people were blinded 
and excited by the means which were used to in- 
crease the army and navy. Fabulous and glitter- 
ing prospects were held before their eyes. Pride in 
their power, scorn of all other peoples, were sedu- 
lously cultivated by every means which skilful 
rulers could devise. Then when the propitious 
hour seemed to have struck, the famous and in- 
famous Council of German and Austrian rulers 
and leaders was held at Potsdam, July 5, 1914, 
to arrange for the assault on Europe. 

It is not we, non-Germans, who hurl an unjust ac- 
cusation against an innocent and beleaguered race. 
Many of their own most important men have with 
pride confessed the diabolical crime, its preparation, 
its purpose, its origin in their own souls. The 
words of that stormy petrel, but true and loyal 
German, Maximilian Harden, are enough. In his 
newspaper, Die Zukunft, where so much truth, 
even unpalatable to his own Government, has been 
flashed on the world, Harden wrote on August 1, 
1914: 

"Let us drop our miserable attempts to excuse 
Germany's action. Not against our will and as a 
nation taken by surprise did we hurl ourselves 
into this gigantic venture. We willed it; we had to 



i2 4 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

will it. We do not stand before the judgment seat 
of Europe; we acknowledge no such jurisdiction. 
Our might shall create a new law in Europe; it is 
Germany that strikes." 

But for that act Germany does stand now and 
forever before the judgment seat of humanity 
and of the living God. 

2. Secondly, Germany began this war with a 
policy, partly announced officially, partly discussed 
and accepted by the people as a whole, partly 
revealed only by the course of events and the steady 
development of plans since the war began. It is 
known now through one or all of these sources 
of information that Germany had set her mind 
and still maintains her purpose as to the following 
points: She desired to control the life of Bel- 
gium; probably she had been determined to pos- 
sess the industrial portion of northern France and 
some, at any rate, of the Channel ports. The 
attainment of these desires would mean the easy, 
progressive absorption of Holland, perhaps with- 
out a war. It is now known that her intention 
was, and is, to seize parts of Russia, that she might 
balance her industrial gains on the West by en- 
larging the field of agricultural opportunity for 
her people to the East. The rapid development 
of her alliances with Austria, Bulgaria, and Turkey 
made not merely possible but actual that imperial 
sway from Hamburg to Bagdad which has come 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 125 

to be recognized as one of her supreme ambitions, 
and one full of menace for the rest of the world. 1 

It is believed, and the proof is practically com- 
plete, that Germany desired not merely territorial 
aggrandizement, but a reconstruction of imperial 
finances. The costly growth of her armies and 
navy had put a burden upon the people which 
threatened to bring about a disturbance of credit. 
While she boasted that she had achieved her aims 
without imposing a crushing load of taxation, 
it must be remembered that a system of loans 
had been created which merely postponed the fall 
of the burden upon the nation. Only one method 
of deliverance was possible, and that was by the 
exaction of enormous indemnities in gold from 
conquered nations. How far thL' motive was 
felt as a driving force, we may not here attempt 
to say. It seems, however, to be completely proved 
that it must be counted as one of those circum- 
stances which urged the Government onwards to 
her momentous act. 

3. In the third place, we must take account 
once more of the long and thorough course of 
preparation which was made for the supreme hour. 



1 Acknowledgment should be made by all thoughtful people 
of the extremely important service of Andre Cheradame in his 
publications, which are the chief literary authority on the subject 
here referred to: "The Pan-German Plot Unmasked," "Pan- 
Germania, the Disease and Cure," "The United States and Pan- 
Germania." 



126 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

As it approached, the possession of almost im- 
measurable military force brought world dominion 
within view, and then threw into relief as the only 
alternative to complete national success a national 
downfall. Nowhere has this been more clearly 
expressed than in von Bernhardi's famous chapter, 
"World Dominion or Downfall" (Weltmacht oder 
Niedergang). Perhaps the climax of all her prepa- 
rations is to be found in the German military 
law which was passed on June 30, 191 3. This 
law provided for an addition of 136,000 officers 
and men to her army, and especially provided 
for an expenditure of a large part of the new 
taxation in the provision of war material. To 
meet this expenditure an impost was made upon 
the capital of German subjects, and they were 
induced to make the sacrifice by a special appeal 
to their patriotism in an hour of special diffi- 
culty for the Fatherland. Manifestly the hour was 
approaching for some great act. Dr. Gottfried 
Nippold is quoted as having said in that very 
year that "systematic stimulation of the war spirit 
is going on," and he accuses his Government of 
deliberately carrying on "the systematic cultiva- 
tion of a war-like spirit." There were those who 
maintained that the passage of the law to which 
I have referred was simply the beginning of mobil- 
ization, and that throws light upon the fact, of 
which Germans boast so much, that they mobilized 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 127 

forces beyond the calculation of all other military 
powers with a rapidity which looked like a miracle. 
It is one of themselves who has said, "When we 
saw all this, we were not astonished, because it 
was no miracle; it was nothing other than the 
net result of a thousand years of work and prepara- 
tion, it was the natural product of the whole of 
human history." 2 The rhetoric here may be for- 
given. The fact is, forty years is enough to account 
for the apparent miracle, or even twenty. For it 
seems to have been only towards the end of last 
century that the rulers of Germany began to form 
deliberate plans for the achievement of the vic- 
tory which this war was intended to obtain. 

Among the means adopted to make a German 
victory secure we are compelled to place the policy 
which that Empire pursued in relation to the 
Hague Conventions. These great international 
conventions, which awoke the admiration of thought- 
ful people throughout the world, seemed to open 
a new day to human history. Perhaps they did. 
But in the meantime the promise is delayed or the 
dawn made hideous. Or is this war the deep dark- 
ness that precedes the dawn? At these conven- 
tions it was felt from the first that the German 
representatives were an alien force. They set 



2 Quoted in "Conquest and Kultur, Aims of the Germans in 
Their Own Words," issued by the Committee on Public Informa- 
tion, Washington, D. C. 



128 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

themselves in opposition to all the main provisions 
which seemed to make for what we may call the 
moralizing of war. But they set themselves in 
most determined and successful opposition towards 
all efforts at establishing compulsory arbitration 
and a process of compulsory disarmament among 
all the nations of the world, Indeed, in relation 
to the last matter it was recently stated by a cab- 
inet member in the British House of Commons, 
that when reduction of armaments was beginning 
to be discussed at the last Hague Convention the 
German Government informed Great Britain that 
if she pressed that subject upon the Convention 
it would be considered a casus belli! 

4. In the fourth place, it is necessary to con- 
sider the methods of war which have been delib- 
erately adopted and carried out by Germany. 

It has already been pointed out that the German 
mind is nothing if not thoroughly logical, and that 
it is willing to take all the consequences in the 
application of its process of logical reasoning to 
the process of active life. 

Starting out then with the conception of war 
as a necessary, healthful, and constant function 
of the State, with the belief that every nation 
has the right to develop its own life even at the 
cost of others, 3 Germany has pursued to the bitter 
end for herself and others every deduction which 

3 Discussed above, Chapter IV, passim. 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 129 

seems to be legitimately made from those funda- 
mental principles: 

a. In the first place, a State that is wisely guided 
in modern times will make long, thorough prepara- 
tion for war. It will try to foresee the directions 
in which war is likely to arise, the enemies it may 
have to deal with, the gains which it must strive 
to secure, the significance of these for its own 
history and its further relations with the rest of 
the world. In pursuance of this policy of com- 
plete preparation, Germany not only built up the 
most mighty military system the world has ever 
seen, but made her preparation in all parts of the 
world for the world crisis which she not only fore- 
saw, but expected herself to create. Among the 
rights of government is that of becoming acquainted 
with the conditions of life, the military resources, 
and the foreign policy of other lands. All govern- 
ments seek this information more or less exhaustively, 
but all other governments of the world have imposed 
upon themselves certain restrictions which we may 
bluntly call restrictions of decency. They have 
realized that there must be a limit to the thorough- 
ness, the completeness, with which this work is 
carried on, and a very definite limit to the methods 
which are employed. Such limitations Germany 
has scorned to regard. Logical consistency dictates 
unlimited completeness of work in every direction, 
and therefore in this. Therefore Germany has not 



i 3 o CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

scrupled to create a system of espionage and to 
enter upon secret policies of influencing public 
opinion in other lands, which no other government 
would conceive of undertaking. The result has 
been, as the world has discovered since 1914 to 
its astonishment and indignation, that Germany 
has carried out systematic treachery in practically 
all her dealings with every country. The Prussian 
ascribes this procedure to energy of will, our failure 
in it to laxity of will. We ascribe avoidance of it 
to our moral self-respect. 

The system is as follows: Every German subject 
is a servant of the Kaiser — wherever he goes he is 
at the call of his master. If, therefore, a merchant 
is traveling in China, a professor of science attends 
a meeting of a learned society in Paris or Australia, 
a pious missionary is working in India or Africa 
— they are all understood to be at the service of 
their country. They have often received instruc- 
tions to send to Berlin ethnological and geographical 
studies of the countries they visited or lived in, 
with the result that important data were gathered 
by the military authorities in Berlin concerning 
those regions which would be of great value to an 
invading army. In pursuance of this policy the 
German Government has used even its colonies 
in Africa, by the building of railways, the making 
of forts, the storing up of military resources, as 
bases for future warfare against neighboring terri- 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 131 

tories. The exposures of the work done by her 
embassy in the United States and the Argentine, 
in Mexico and Japan, since 1914 have revealed 
the depths to which even her highest ambassadors 
and diplomats would descend in the carrying out 
of this terrible policy. Everywhere they have 
used every means conceivable, however shameful, 
to gain information, and everywhere they have 
used every means conceivable, however shameful, 
to undermine the authority of governments among 
their own people, to entangle them in their relations 
with other countries, and thus to win advantage 
to the German Empire. 

b. A German doctrine of war which has startled 
the world since it has been proved to be not merely 
the theory of scholars, but the living policy of the 
German Government, consists in this — that war 
is not a war between armies, but between nations. 
The object of each is not merely to beat the enemy, 
but to conquer the people of the other land. In 
fact, even though there were a sincere desire only 
to fight with armed men, account must be taken 
of the fact that armed enemies defending their 
own territories are immediately and constantly 
supported and strengthened by the sympathy and 
loyalty of their civilian fellow-citizens. It is ob- 
vious, then, that an invading army must realize 
the whole population as constituting its object 
of attack. Since the one aim of warfare is victory 



132 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

as complete as possible, victory as swiftly as possi- 
ble, and therefore victory at least cost to the invader 
and at greatest cost to the nation invaded, no act 
should be neglected which will secure that end. 
This doctrine is the logical fountainhead of those 
methods of warfare which have been constantly 
and systematically carried out by Germany in 
Belgium, France, Serbia, Rumania, and Russia. 
There is no difference in her methods in all these 
lands. Everywhere she has treated the civilian 
population as active enemies. Everywhere she has 
used them without scruple for her own military 
advantage. There is no need here to recite the 
details or proofs which abound concerning the 
theory, and the unflinching method in which war 
thus conceived has been carried on. 4 The following 
actions are abundantly established by unques- 
tionable witnesses: Early in the war certain Ger- 
man officers put Belgian women and children in 
front of their advancing regiments to face the fire 
of French and Belgian forces. Women and children 
have been constantly employed in war work against 
their own country, and this often within the fire 
zone of the battle-field. Men, women and children 



4 The report of the Bryce Commission, the report of a judicial 
inquiry by Belgian officials and judges, the diaries of German 
soldiers, the witness of newspaper correspondents and of the Amer- 
ican Belgian Relief Commission, are all sources to which any reader 
may turn easily for full information on this ghastly subject. The 
United States Government through its Committee on Public In- 
formation has issued two Reports on German War Practices. 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 133 

have been executed without trial in large numbers 
on various pleas, all unproved and all out of relation 
to the terrible penalty exacted. Women and chil- 
dren have been driven homeless and starving out 
of their homes, in order that German soldiers 
might occupy these and eat the produce of their 
farms and gardens. "War is not itself unchristian, 
when it is not, as regards its purpose, an offensive 
one. The State has to guard its honor, that is, 
its sovereignty; and when this is assailed, it is its 
duty to make use of every material means, and 
therefore of war also, to repel such assault — an 
imposing example of self-defence. But its aim is 
not to destroy the enemy, not to strike to the 
heart, but to attain to an honorable peace." 5 Shades 
of Belgium and Serbia, this was written in Berlin! 
In all invaded lands German officers and men 
have been allowed systematically to pillage prac- 
tically every village, city, or lonely farmhouse, 
or chateau which they entered. Where furniture 
could not be carried off, it has been smashed; 
where machinery was valuable, it has been taken 
away to Germany; where money has been found, 
it has been stolen. All this has been done con- 
trary to the modern laws of war to which Germany 
put her own name publicly and solemnly in the 
Hague Convention. The destruction of cities and 
churches has been carried out systematically with- 

6 Dorner, "Christian Ethics." Trans., p. 580. 



134 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

out military reason. Cathedrals have been shelled 
down on the plea that they were used as outlook 
posts by the French and British, in spite of the 
repeated and solemn denial of the latter that they 
had ever been so used. And indeed in those days, 
when Rheims Cathedral was in the center of a 
zone where many observation balloons and air- 
planes were constantly higher in the air than any 
town, there could be no good reason for any French 
officer endangering the cathedral by attempting to 
use a spot so low down as that for observation pur- 
poses. When the Germans retired over a wide 
territory after the battle of the Somme in 191 6, 
they devastated the country thoroughly, cutting 
down even fruit trees, a proceeding denounced 
as barbarous by Oriental warriors in ancient times. 
Germany, in pursuit of logical thoroughness, and 
seeking to subdue not an army but the spirit of a 
people, raided open towns and villages in England 
and France with bombs dropped from airplanes. 
Large multitudes of civilians of all ages and both 
sexes have been killed in this way. Germany has 
sunk merchant ships without observation of the 
recognized principles of international law. Many 
thousands of civilians have been drowned. Ger- 
many has sunk hospital ships, has now begun 
almost systematically to bomb Red Cross hospitals 
in France. Finding that the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association, by its superb service, helps to 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 135 

sustain the spirit of an army, Germany now makes 
Y M C A huts in France a special object of attack 
by shells from her guns and her airplanes. 

The sickening indictment might be carried much 
further, for there is literally no act which could 
injure a country and so seem to hasten the victory 
of the invaders from which the German commanders 
would shrink. 

c. We must take account of the revival by the 
Germans of that ancient system of deportation 
which has not been thoroughly carried out by any 
other race since the days of the Assyrians. It is 
a clear and simple deduction from the original 
principles which have been laid down, that if a 
State with an overflowing population intends to 
conquer and occupy neighboring territories, it must 
secure in some way the removal of the inhabitants. 
This procedure has been carried out by Germany 
since 1914 in three or four different ways. In 
Belgium she has done it by murder of many thou- 
sands of the people, by creating conditions of starva- 
tion which decrease the population, by carrying 
off large numbers to work in Germany, where, 
insufficiently fed and sufficiently ill-treated, they 
have died by the thousand. In the Orient another 
method has been employed. Turkey has been 
engaged to clear out the glorious regions of Armenia, 
that German colonists might settle there in the 
great day when the Empire stretches to Bagdad. 



136 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

How its work has been carried out under Germany's 
direction and by Germany's approval is known to 
all the world. In Serbia depopulation meant sim- 
ply massacre, or expulsion from their territory, 
of practically the entire population by Germans 
and Austrians. In Russia, in the new Northern 
territories wrested from the Bolsheviki, the process 
goes on no less certainly than elsewhere. Eye- 
witnesses from America have told of seeing corpses 
of the Polish dead, men, women, and children, 
by hundreds of thousands strewn along the high- 
ways. For miles they traveled in a lane of human 
bodies. A young German officer, who for a time 
served in Galicia when Germany drove back the 
Russian armies that had conquered and occupied 
that territory, writes with astonishment of the 
fact that everywhere the Russian armies had 
paid respect to the persons and property of the 
inhabitants. He recorded in his diary that nothing 
was destroyed and the people were content. But 
he goes on to describe with almost naive frankness 
the thoroughness with which his own fellow-officers 
and men proceeded to correct the mistake which 
the Russians had made. Where the Russian armies 
left order, property, self-respect in the people, 
the German armies, which were supposed to be 
delivering the territory from a foreign foe, left 
only devastation, poverty, and shame amongst the 
same people. 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 137 

It is needless to cite specimens of the literature 
by which this very process of evacuating conquered 
territories has been expounded and defended. It 
is always open to say that any one utterance is the 
private opinion of the man who made the speech 
or wrote the book. But when you have many 
speeches and many books from many men, and 
even from governmental leaders of thought and 
public policy, and when you find that the actual 
practice of war fulfils the warnings of these speak- 
ers and writers, the conclusions are obvious, and 
they are damning. Thus Friedrich Lange so long 
ago as 1904: "If we take, we must also keep. A 
foreign territory is not incorporated until the day 
when the rights of property of Germans are rooted 
in its soil. With all necessary prudence, but also 
with inflexible determination, a process of expro- 
priation should be inaugurated, by which the 
Poles and the Alsatians and Lorrainers would be 
gradually transported to the interior of the Empire, 
while Germans would replace them on the fron- 
tiers/' Daniel Frymann, in a work which by the 
year 1914 had passed through twenty-one editions 
and therefore had been accepted as significant if 
not authoritative by multitudes of German people 
of all classes, wrote as follows: "But if we con- 
sider seriously the peculiar position of the German 
people, squeezed into the middle of Europe, and 
running the risk of being suffocated for want of 



i 3 8 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

air, it must be agreed that we might be compelled 
to demand from a vanquished enemy, either in 
the East or in the West, that he should hand over 
the unpopulated territory. . . . (In case of war with 
Russia) We shall demand the cession of such 
territory as we need for the straightening of our 
frontiers and for colonization. Evacuation of it 
will be required." Some of these German brains 
write on this subject as if they had actually lost 
their balance, as when Klaus Wagner in his book 
entitled "Krieg" (War) writes as follows: "By 
right of war the right of strange races to migrate 
into Germanic settlements will be taken away. 
By right of war the non-Germanic (population) in 
America and Great Australia must be settled in 
Africa. ... By right of war we can send back the 
useless South American Romance peoples and the 
half-breeds to North Africa." The extreme folly 
of such language must not blind us to the ghastly 
significance of the fact that men who seem other- 
wise to fulfil the requirements of a rational life, 
when they come to think and speak of the German 
Empire lose all sense of proportion, all sense of 
human decency. In the name of their honor they 
have lost the respect of the world, in the name 
of consistency they have blasted their reputation 
for humanity. 6 

6 For the above quotations I am indebted to the document issued 
by the Committee on Public Information entitled "Conquest 
and Kultur, Aims of the Germans in Their Own Words." 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 139 

5. The German Government long ago committed 
itself to the definite doctrine that treaties were 
to be observed only at the convenience of the 
stronger power. The world did not take this seri- 
ously and continued to enter into covenants with 
the Imperial Government. This will never again 
be possible. Two acts of the German autocracy 
are sufficient to expel her as an autocracy forever 
from the world of covenanted nations. When she 
invaded Belgium she trampled upon a sacred 
treaty. She confessed through the mouth of her 
chancellor and of her foreign secretary that this 
deed was wrong, but she pleaded military necessity 
as not merely her excuse but her justification. 
Whatever war needs, that must be done without 
regard to any other standards, even though they 
be the standards of truth before God and the world. 
There is no need to labor this point, which must 
be referred to again in a later chapter. Sufficient 
to say that, as if she had not thus convinced the 
world of her superiority to the laws of faithfulness, 
Germany proceeded three years later to make a 
treaty with the so-called Russian Government of 
the hour, and ere the ink was dry proceeded to 
trample her signature in the dust. The world can 
never forget the treachery of those who signed 
a treaty of peace at Brest-Litovsk, February, 191 8, 
and since that date have progressively broken 
every one of its conditions and obligations, and 



i 4 o CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

have used it merely as an instrument for absorb- 
ing vast and rich territories under the sway of 
the German sword, that the development and 
enlargement of the German people might pro- 
ceed. 

6. The conclusion of the matter is not merely 
that Germany is powerful, or that the German 
Government is wicked, but that this powerful 
Empire has deliberately adopted a policy which 
she defends with intellectual as well as physical 
methods, a policy which renders her superior to 
all treaties, superior to all dictates of humanity, 
superior to all the traditional laws of morality. 
This constitutes the Empire a menace to the world. 
The very meaning of humanity is in dispute; the 
purposes which the race is to pursue, the moral 
ideals which the nations must cherish, are in dis- 
pute; the fundamental principles of human charac- 
ter, not to speak of the revelations of the divine 
will concerning righteousness and justice, are in 
dispute. The principles which the whole world 
acknowledges are denied by Germany, and Ger- 
many does not merely deny them, but makes 
herself the most powerfully armed force in the 
history of men to put an end to those principles 
and to make effective, wherever her domination 
and influence go, those principles which we have 
described above, and which her conduct of the 
war, from the invasion of Belgium to the murder 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 141 

of Red Cross nurses the other day, illustrates 
perfectly in practice. 

7. There has been much discussion by intellec- 
tual Christian folk of the question whether or not 
it is just and wise to speak of Germany as a whole, 
when we pass a judgment of condemnation on the 
acts of her Government. The point is of ethical 
and practical importance. 

On the one side we must remember that in so 
large a mass of people, many of them highly in- 
telligent, many of them persons of a "good con- 
science," there must be centers of difference on all 
matters concerning national policy. In some parts 
of Germany there always have been a dislike and 
distrust of the Prussian spirit and the Prussian 
person, and a constant resentment against assim- 
ilation of the whole country to the moral type of 
the predominant partner in the Empire. There 
are three groups of considerable number and in- 
fluence where there is today an inner and powerful, 
and not always silent, rebellion against the plans 
and spirit and methods of the Pan-Germanist 
party which has led the Empire into and in this war. 

There are the Social Democrats, many of whom 
are true to their faith; a large number of intellec- 
tuals, some of whom have left the country, many 
of whom have remained in silent grief; and an 
indefinite but considerable section of the religious 
people, whose pastors have not misled them and 



i 4 2 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

whose hearts are in anguish, torn between the fear 
of defeat and hatred of the leadership which has 
produced the war. It is in these circles that the 
hope of a morally regenerated German government 
and national policy lies. 

It is wise and powerfully helpful that Pres- 
ident Wilson should distinguish between the Ger- 
man people and their Government. Even though 
at present the better part is small, and the larger 
part of the nation deluded, the day approaches 
when the Government must face an awakened and 
indignant people. That the President of the United 
States should speak as if that day had come is one 
way of bringing it to pass. 

But, on the other hand, we must consider the 
fact that a nation acts as a whole. Protesting 
minorities do not and cannot abolish the fact that 
the majority constitutes for the time being the 
will of the nation. There is no doubt that the 
vast majority of Germans welcomed the war with- 
out apprehension and with joyous foretaste of 
victory. The wiser and undeluded minority had 
no voice. Hence the necessity is upon us, even 
when we remember these silent circles who hold 
to the better part, to speak of the guilt of Ger- 
many as a whole. It is the German State that 
began the war, and the German nation must en- 
dure all the ignominy and the woe that will come 
with peace. 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WORLD WAR 



CHAPTER VII 

ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WORLD WAR 

B. The Aims and Spirit of the Allies and of 
the United States of America 

We must now consider the ethical values involved 
in the action of the Allied Powers and of the United 
States of America when they entered into the 
great war. 

i. We must state the matter as simply and 
bluntly as possible in relation, say, to the United 
States. "Was it the duty of the American nation, 
acting through its Government, to enter into the 
war against Germany?" 

Let us be careful to see what the wrong ways 
of putting this question may be. The question is 
not, "Are you angry enough to strike back?" nor, 
"Do you hate Germany hard enough to wish to 
kill the Germans ?"" Nor again, is it a relevant 
question whether America is herself sinless enough 
to engage in such a task. Some would say it is 
hypocrisy for a nation which has its own faults, to 
blame and chastise another, as this nation blames 
Germany and seeks to bring her to her knees. We 

145 



i 4 6 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

must remember that a man who sees before him 
a definite duty is not absolved from performing 
it because he is conscious of faults of his own. 
Shirking the duty imposed upon him by his office 
and relations to other people will never help to 
cleanse his conscience. Indeed, the hypocrisy may 
rather lie on the other side, on the side of a na- 
tion which should avoid the performance of its duty 
in war by professing to be morally unfitted for the 
task. These considerations are all aside from the 
real question, which is exactly as we have stated 
it above. Assuming that no man is without sin, 
no nation without its faults, its blunders, perhaps 
even its crimes, the question remains facing us, 
whether or not it is the duty of the United States of 
America as a nation and government to cast itself 
with all its strength into the task of defeating 
Germany, and so help to direct history away from 
the path on which German doctrine and the German 
spirit would drive the nations of the world. 

There is still another way of putting the matter 
which we must deprecate. There are those who 
say, from the security of their Christian life, that 
this is a wicked world and that in such a world 
nothing else could be expected. This means that 
perhaps from mere earthly standpoints the declara- 
tion of war can be defended and those who live 
on these lower levels may not be adding therefore 
to their guilt before God by accepting their share 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 147 

in the matter. This seems a clear case of intel- 
lectual prevarication. Our whole life and all our 
duties arise in a world of sin. All fulfilment of duty 
is infected with the imperfection of our personal 
characters, and all our attempts to obey the Sermon 
on the Mount are met by the perplexities of our 
situation. These principles, serene as the stars 
when Jesus speaks them, become confusing lights 
among the shadows of our earthly and our sinful 
relations ancf impulses. There is no region where 
Christian duty does not come upon us in the midst 
of relations which are not perfect, human laws 
which are defective, situations which have evil 
in them. It is into these that the will of God must 
enter and can enter only through our fulfilment 
of duty. Is it a religious duty to engage in the war? 
2. Manifestly the Church of Christ in America 
could only maintain that this Government did 
wrong in declaring a state of war with Germany, 
on the theory that the existence of the State and 
the fulfilment of its functions lie outside the will 
of God, a position which, as we have seen, is in- 
consistent with the whole conception of human 
nature and the relation of the providence of God 
to human history, and with the place and task of the 
Church in the midst of the nations. In seeking, 
therefore, to discover whether the action of the 
State must receive the approval of Christian men 
and their support, we must briefly review the 



148 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

action of the nations that are at war with Germany. 
What, on the whole, is the spirit in which they 
have undertaken this tremendous enterprise? 

First, we must emphasize their unpreparedness 
and weakness up to the hour when the cataclysm 
occurred. These very conditions were confessedly 
part of the incitement felt by the German people. 
France was understood to be undermined in her 
morale, and inefficient in her military organization; 
Russia was understood to be very rapidly reform- 
ing her army institution and building up great 
military power, but this process was far from com- 
plete; Great Britain had indeed the most powerful 
navy in the world, but if she entered into the war, 
her efforts would be confined to the sea, as she 
had only a small standing army, large numbers 
of which were constantly necessary for garrisoning 
far-distant parts of her empire. 

Next, we must remind ourselves of the most 
strenuous efforts made by each and all of these 
countries to prevent Germany from plunging Europe 
into a struggle that might end in the utter destruc- 
tion of her civilization. It is no exaggeration to 
say that the ambassadors of all these nations at 
Berlin, and their cabinets in their own capitals, 
in almost hourly conference with German am- 
bassadors and ministers, exhausted all the means 
which the human mind could conceive to change 
the purpose of the Kaiser and his ministry. Moral 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 149 

suasion was carried to the utmost verge of self- 
respect. Appeals to the honor of Germany were 
urged with passion and conviction. Serbia agreed 
to the Austrian note except on one or two points, 
which she begged that Empire to refer to a neutral 
conference. Through her skilled and competent 
minister at Berlin, Belgium used all the resources 
of reason, all the appeals of heart and conscience, 
upon the chancellor and the foreign secretary of 
the Imperial Government. 1 France employed her 
ancient diplomatic skill and energy; Russia, all the 
resources at her command, to secure the same end. 
As to the action of Great Britain, it is only nec- 
essary to quote the final judgment of the one Ger- 
man who of all others will stand in history as the 
supreme judge of the matter at this point. Prince 
Lichnowsky, in his Memorandum entitled, "My 
Mission to London, 191 2-14," after describing the 
history of the negotiations which he carried on 
with Sir Edward Grey, declares that the mission 
was wrecked "not by the wiles of the British, but 
by the wiles of our policy," and again he says, 
"It is no wonder that the whole of the civilized 
world outside Germany placed the entire respon- 
sibility for the World War upon our shoulders." His 
account of his negotiations with the British Govern- 

1 The work of Baron de Beyens, " U Allemagne avant la Guerre" 
(translated as "Germany before the War"), is surely one of the 
most illuminating, moving, and conclusive of all the many author- 
itative documents describing the origins of the war. 



i 5 o CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

ment reveals the fact that to the very end that 
Government sought by every means to hold back 
the hand of Germany from its fatal blow. The 
decisive hour in British history was not reached 
until Belgium was invaded. Until that event took 
place, a large section of the British public and an 
important section of the British cabinet were not 
convinced that it would be necessary for Great 
Britain to enter the war. It is quite certain that 
she would have done so in any case; but the in- 
vasion of Belgium, carried out with extreme cynicism 
in defiance of treaty obligations, precipitated the 
conflicting opinions and impulses of the national 
life. Every honorable man decided that Great 
Britain had no alternative. Immediately all parts 
of the Empire sprang to arms, convinced that the 
motherland was right, determined to prove their 
conviction by assuming their full share in the un- 
measured labor which now lay before them. It 
is useless, and indeed inept, to recall the fact that 
other interests of a more material kind must be 
served in the case of all these countries, when they 
win victory upon the fields of battle and Germany 
is on her knees. Whatever political benefits may 
accrue, nothing can ever change the fact that each 
and all of these nations drew the sword in defence 
of honor, in defence of freedom, in defence of right 
and justice against a force that trampled on all 
these, the highest treasures of the human national 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 151 

spirit. Moreover, there is no earthly reward which 
can possibly be proposed to any of these nations 
which will weigh even as dust in the balance against 
the losses, the agonies, the crushing burden which 
they have endured through the years of war. They 
have paid and are paying a price beyond calcula- 
tion, whose ultimate statement must be in terms 
of the soul, and its supreme sorrows. 

3. From the beginning of the war the eyes of 
all nations were directed towards the United States 
of America. Her enormous resources made it 
certain that her successive decisions of policy would 
profoundly influence, perhaps finally determine, 
the fortunes of the war. During the first period 
President Wilson, as the leader of the policy of 
the government and the interpreter of the spirit 
of the people, issued a long series of notes, addressed 
now to Germany and now to the Allies. In these 
successive notes the President sought to make 
clear three different subjects: 

First, he sought to expound the attitude of 
America towards the general situation and the 
defence of her proceedings when these were called 
in question by either side.] 

Second, he tried as the head of a neutral govern- 
ment to discover ways in which peace might be 
secured by inducing both sides to define their aims 
and at least the preliminary conditions on which 
peace might be restored. 



1 5 2 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

Third, he was later compelled to deal in a very 
special manner with the German breach of inter- 
national law at sea. Her submarine warfare be- 
came ruthless. She attacked and sank merchant 
ships contrary to the rules of international law, 
under the plea that the submarine by its very 
nature could not do its work and observe the pre- 
scriptions of that law. With this excuse American 
citizens were drowned and American ships were 
directly attacked. On one occasion submarines 
sank ships off the American coast. The President's 
notes were intended to convince Germany that 
this procedure was wrong in itself, was practically 
an attack upon the United States of America, 
and therefore ought to be abandoned. For a brief 
time in April, 1916, it seemed as if his method had 
triumphed; but subsequent experience showed that 
the German Government had no intention of aban- 
doning her claim of right in this matter. Through 
the winter of 1916-17, especially when she an- 
nounced that an unlimited warfare would be carried 
on against all ships sailing within certain zones, 
the world saw that a crisis was being reached. 

In the meantime the United States Government 
discovered that an appalling amount of treachery 
had been carried on within its own territories by 
German emissaries. This system was traced even 
to the German embassy at Washington. Men who 
were trusted as official representatives of the Ger- 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 153 

man Government were found to have been engaged 
in conspiracies to attack Canada and to destroy 
factories and shipping in America. The disclosure 
of the famous Zimmermann letter to a German 
official in Mexico, in which it was proposed that 
Mexico and Japan should combine against the 
United States, brought matters to a crisis. 

The world was astonished and often impatient 
at the long-drawn-out controversy which the Pres- 
ident carried on with the German Government. 
He resisted every appeal to declare war in hours 
of passion, in a spirit of revenge. In his address 
to Congress on April 2, 191 7, looking back over 
this period of history, he speaks of "all these bitter 
months through which America had endured the 
policy and hostile action of the present German 
Government." It was evident to all who under- 
stood the situation that President Wilson had 
exercised an almost unparalleled self-repression in 
carrying out what he considered to be the true 
policy of the Government of the United States. 
No one ever confronted a threatening foe with more 
patience. No one ever tried to divert him from 
acts of hostility more sincerely. No one ever 
allowed himself and the people over whom he ruled 
to endure more of what the world calls humiliation, 
in the endeavor to maintain that self-respect which 
only he can deeply feel who feels that when at 
last he begins* to fight, the compulsion has come 



i 5 4 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

from without. "Too proud to fight" is a famous 
phrase which was hurled back at the President 
with contempt and scorn by eloquent lips; but 
people forget that it was matched by the correlative 
phrase which was uttered at a later date, when 
he said that times came when a man must be "too 
proud not to fight." Only in the combination of 
the elements of these two ethical ideals can the 
true law of life be found. The American treat- 
ment of Mexico is the triumphant fulfilment of 
the former, the American armies in France are the 
result of the latter principle. 

It became increasingly clear to the whole Amer- 
ican people, not merely that Germany had already 
made war upon the Republic when it attacked her 
innocent citizens going about their rightful business 
and upon her ships on the open sea, but that Ger- 
many must include an attack upon America at 
some date yet to come in her program of world 
conquest. Mr. Gerard in his book, "My Four 
Years in Germany," bears witness to the fact 
that the Kaiser himself twice uttered the threat 
that after the war Germany would reckon with 
America. What confronted the nation, therefore, 
was not merely a present wrong, but a future 
attack. The great war ceased to be merely a Euro- 
pean affair. Already it had involved Japan, India, 
and the British dominions, already it had invaded 
Africa. It was quite clear now that the republics 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 155 

of North and South America were involved. Espe- 
cially was the Republic of the United States of 
America at last compelled to decide whether she 
could longer maintain her position as a State com- 
mitted to the task of maintaining order and right 
within her own life without entering upon the great 
contest. 

4. It was on April 2, 191 7, after some months of 
increasing anxiety for the American nation, that 
the President made his momentous address to 
Congress. In this address he pointed out that 
Germany was now engaged in "a war against all 
nations." "The challenge/' he said, "is to all 
mankind." He made it clear that in respect of 
the United States the duty of Congress was not 
to initiate war, but to recognize the fact that Ger- 
many had actually begun war against the American 
people. "I advise that the Congress declare the 
recent course of the Imperial Government to be 
in fact nothing less than war against the Govern- 
ment and people of the United States; that it 
formally accept the status of belligerent which has 
thus been thrust upon it." Far beyond the imme- 
diate pressure of the hour, he saw the goal towards 
which America must move in the conduct of this 
war. "Let us be very clear," he said, "and make 
very clear to all the world, what our motives and 
our objects are. . . . Our object ... is to vindicate the 
principles of peace and justice in the life of the 



i 5 6 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

world as against selfish and autocratic power, and 
to set up among the really free and self-governing 
peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and 
of action as will henceforth ensure the observance 
of those principles." The most famous utterance 
in this momentous document, the one by which 
it will be known in history, is this: "The world 
must be made safe for democracy"; but the really 
most important statement of policy in the whole 
message is contained in an earlier paragraph, where 
after describing the ideal for which America and 
the Allies must fight, which we have quoted above, 
he says, "A steadfast concert for peace can never 
be maintained except by a partnership of the dem- 
ocratic nations. No autocratic government could 
be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its 
covenants." These are words from which the 
opponents of the German Empire can never resile 
without loss of honor and disaster to the human 
race. They are the central statement in the address, 
the essential meaning of the war. 

5. We come now to answer the question for 
which the material is laid before us by the entire 
argument of the preceding chapters. The question 
from the point of view of Christian Ethics has 
already been put point-blank in the very simple 
words, "Was it the duty of America to enter into 
this war?" If we answer, "Yes," we must take all 
the consequences upon our shoulders. Our whole 



ETHICAL VALUES IN THE WAR 157 

argument has aimed at establishing the fact that 
behind this question there lies another: "Is it 
necessary for America to use force against the force 
of another country in order to fulfil her own func- 
tions and preserve her own existence as a State 
and nation?" For as we have so fully argued, if 
the State is a natural and divine institution, if its 
functions are sacred functions, then, in the largest 
sense, they must be looked upon as essentially 
Christian functions. 

In view of the whole situation, the conclusion 
of a student of Christian Ethics must be as follows : 
First, the fundamental function of maintaining a 
moral order wherever her authority and the life 
and sacred rights of her citizens extend must be 
exercised against the attacks, present and to come, 
of the German Empire. This duty could not be 
avoided without the surrender of the life of the 
State. 

Second, the burden of this duty involves the 
moral necessity of supporting and assisting those 
sister nations which are in danger of being de- 
stroyed by the same enemy that seeks the destruc- 
tion of the State and nation of America. From 
the beginning of the war many American citizens 
maintained that the Government ought at once 
to have ranged itself on the side of stricken and 
murdered Belgium. The country as a whole was 
not convinced. But it has added enormously to 



158 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

the sense of high moral obligation, and even of 
religious devotion, that America now finds herself 
in active defence not only of her own rights, but 
of those of Belgium and France, which have been 
so ruthlessly trampled under an iron heel. 

Third, it is a moral obligation that all nations 
in the world which are organized for the establish- 
ment of freedom and justice and the promotion 
of moral and peaceful relations among the peoples 
of the world, should form a coalition to confront 
and defeat those nations which have banded them- 
selves together with conviction of intellect and 
devotion of heart to maintain the contrary ideals. 
It is two fundamental moral principles which are 
at war with one another in the world today. On 
the one hand is the principle that the will to power 
is so much of the essence of a nation that war 
becomes its primary function and conquest its 
supreme ideal. On the other hand there is the 
conviction of those peoples which hold that the 
essence of the State is to secure justice, and that 
this justice is to be maintained not simply within 
the individual nation but in the relations of one 
State with another throughout the world. The 
appeal to force is made by them in order to main- 
tain justice, and the maintenance of justice in 
international relations will inevitably lead to a 
coalition of the peoples of the world, whose final 
effect will be the abolition of war. 



ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 



CHAPTER VIII 
ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 

The World War marks one of the greatest crises 
in the moral history of mankind. Future writers 
on the history of Ethics will be able to see more 
clearly and completely than we can the moral 
significance of the developments, national and 
international, which led up to the war, and of the 
mighty changes in the structure of society and in 
the spirit of government throughout the world 
which it has wrought. But there are certain out- 
standing facts in the situation whose ethical value 
we are bound over to consider if we would take 
our part intelligently and with a clear conscience 
in the great events of this great hour. In naming 
them and attempting a brief statement of their 
significance, we shall be compelled to survey in 
another form some of the arguments of the pre- 
ceding chapters. 

I. The first great moral advance has been made 

evident in the world-wide study of the causes of 

this war. Even the German Government is a 

witness to the necessity felt in our day for a moral 

justification of her part in the great event. The 

161 



162 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

primary desire of the Government quite evidently 
was to justify the war before the German people 
themselves, which could be done only by assert- 
ing that it is for them a war of defence. It appears 
that straightforward lies were told in order to de- 
ceive the German people. Their Government 
told them that France had invaded Alsace, that 
French cavalry were seen in Belgium, that Belgium 
herself had broken neutrality, all of which asser- 
tions are proved to have been without foundation 
in fact. But they enabled the Kaiser to exercise 
his constitutional right of declaring war under 
the plea that it was a war of defence. 

A secondary and no less powerful desire gradually 
awoke in the mind of the German Government, 
namely, to justify herself before the judgment of 
the world, and especially of the neutral nations. 
The idea that what Germany does is right because 
Germany does it, was a strident utterance of her 
military Pan-German enthusiasts. It could con- 
vince no one outside, and only a section in Ger- 
many. It was too immoral and blatant an asser- 
tion to prevail over the natural dictates of the 
human conscience. Hence Germany was com- 
pelled to seek one way after another of proving 
that she was rather the victim and prey of ruthless 
neighbors than herself a beast of prey. 

The act of Belgium, France, and Russia needed 
no defence. It was justified absolutely by the 



ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 163 

unnecessary act of aggression upon their territories 
on the part of German armies. 

The act of Great Britain no doubt may now be 
described as an act of self-defence. It is clear to 
the whole world that the conquest of Belgium and 
France would have proved but a stepping-stone 
for the conquest of the British Empire. It will 
ever remain a strange fact that at the beginning 
of the war the British people were not unanimous, 
and even the Cabinet was divided as to whether 
it was the duty of the Government to declare war. 
So deep had become the passion for peace, so prev- 
alent the belief that Germany might yet be won 
to a policy of neighborliness and peace in the de- 
velopment of her world relations ! It was not until 
Belgium was actually invaded that the British 
sprang unanimously to arms. Then honor spoke, 
and only one voice, a voice of anguish and yet of 
supreme determination, answered from the heart 
of the Empire. Even Mr. Lloyd George, a life- 
long pacifist, who had opposed the Boer War on 
principle and at the risk of his life, was convinced 
by this one act of treachery, this one base trans- 
gression against the laws of humanity and honor, 
and became the flaming leader of the Empire in the 
most tragic and the supreme effort of its history. 

As to the actions of America, we have already 
spoken in a recent page sufficiently. One more 
quotation from the President's address to Con- 



i6 4 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

gress is the complete exposition of her spirit: "We 
are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose 
because we know that in such a Government, fol- 
lowing such methods, we can never have a friend; 
and that in the presence of its organized power, 
always lying in wait to accomplish we know not 
what purpose, there can be no assured security 
for the democratic governments of the world. 
We are now about to accept the gage of battle with 
this natural foe to liberty, and shall if necessary 
spend the whole force of the nation to check and 
nullify its pretensions and its power. . . . We have 
no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, 
no dominion. We seek no indemnities for our- 
selves, no material compensation for the sacrifices 
we shall freely make. We are but one of the cham- 
pions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satis- 
fied when those rights have been made as secure 
as the faith and the freedom of nations can make 
them." 

These words will ring for generations to come, 
as they rang through the world when they were 
first uttered, as among the most sublime expressions 
of the devotion of a nation to the noblest moral 
ideals, and its willingness to stake its all on their 
accomplishment against a predatory foe. 

2. In the second place, we must name as mark- 
ing one of the great ethical gains of the war that a 
new conception has been driven home to the heart 



ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 165 

of man of what we may call the moralizing of war. 
This process has been going on for centuries in 
the development of international law and in the 
decisions of successive conventions, first of the 
leading powers at Geneva, 1865, later at the suc- 
cessive Hague Conventions where all the nations 
of the world were represented. At first sight it 
may seem as if this war signalized the destruction 
of this process. Chivalry, which came to life on the 
fields of France and Flanders and flourished there 
"when knighthood was in flower," has been done 
to death, trampled in the very mire of her birth- 
land by the German spirit. The story of German 
atrocities not simply against civilians, but even 
in the act of war, is black indeed. The frequent 
killing of the wounded, the occasional crucifying 
of living men, the raiding and shelling of open 
towns, are all contradictions of that sentiment of 
humanity which had come to prevail on the field 
of battle, even in the heat of the fight. The sudden 
use of deadly gas marked a new era, not only in 
this war, but in the history of Germany's destruc- 
tion of chivalry. 

The rule of the Allies in meeting these mani- 
festations of diabolism has been perfectly simple. 
Wherever an act of Germany has been such as to 
give her armies a military advantage and to threaten 
defeat of her foes, reprisal in kind has been neces- 
sary. Gas has been answered by gas. But where 



166 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

the act does not yield military advantage, the 
case has been less clear. As a rule the Allies seem 
to have decided to avoid reprisal in kind. If the 
French have occasionally dropped bombs on open 
towns in Germany, the act has been very rare and 
goes against the grain of the national character. 
The rule they have observed is to select only those 
objects which are of military importance for their 
attacks; that the neighboring civil population is 
terrorized is perhaps a welcome by-product of 
their policy. Where civilians have been killed, 
the Allies are quite willing to confess it as a re- 
grettable accident. The difference between the 
German moral character and that of their foes 
is vividly expressed in the utterance attributed to 
a British officer. Someone was urging that the 
British and the French should treat German prison- 
ers exactly as their prisoners were treated in Ger- 
many. The story of this treatment is extremely 
painful and shameful. The British officer replied, 
"Yes, I suppose we ought to do it. But then, you 
know, we can't do it!" 

We must be profoundly thankful that in the 
face of severe temptation and constant trial of 
patience, the Allies have striven to maintain the 
highest standards that have been hitherto attained 
in the moralizing of warfare. The contrast between 
the two methods stands before the world, and is 
giving to humanity everywhere a lesson in prac- 



ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 167 

tical ethics which will undoubtedly influence his- 
tory forever. 

3. The ethical progress of humanity is further 
discovered in the definition of the purposes held 
by the Allies and America in their prosecution of 
the war to a victorious issue. In the first place, 
when they speak unanimously of the defence of 
democracy, this is no mere form of words or vacuous 
ideal. Democracy for the self-governing peoples 
of the world is a spiritual and solid reality of infinite 
worth. As a method of government it has its own 
difficulties. It has certain weaknesses when com- 
pared with the directness, rigidity, and superficial 
efficiency of an autocratic government. And of 
these the democracies of the world are more keenly 
aware than their critics in imperial palaces. The 
history of every democracy in the world reflects 
a systematic effort to correct defects in its govern- 
ment. For the defects are not inherent in the 
theory. They arise from the imperfections of 
human nature as it pursues far-off ideals. To over- 
come them step by step, through self-criticism, 
humiliation, discussion, even internal disturbance, 
is itself a noble and lofty ethical task, the highest 
yet presented to the living conscience of a nation. 

On the other hand, the defects of autocracy are 
inherent in the theory, and utterly incurable by 
any process of history. The very right of some 
one family and its chosen advisers to rule a whole 



i68 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

nation autocratically and without responsibility has 
become in the presence of constitutional monarchies 
and democracies an actually immoral conception. 
The evil of it becomes visible in two irresistible 
tendencies which not merely haunt the heart but 
drive the will of every autocracy. The first is that 
of subordinating other interests to the ambition 
of the rulers. It is practically impossible for the 
autocrat to interpret the highest good of his people 
apart from his own personal glory. The other 
tendency flows from this, and was noted by Pres- 
ident Wilson in his address. It consists in the 
formation of secret purposes concerning the rela- 
tions of the autocrat and his people to other nations 
and their interests. These secret purposes become 
policies, they guide the making of treaties and the 
forming of alliances, they infect with their poison 
every form of relationship between that State and 
all others. The old but potent spirit is passed on 
from one generation to another. Continuity of 
will is maintained, working in this sinister and 
menacing manner upon the life of other peoples. 

The present Kaiser is himself the loudest pro- 
claimer of these very facts. He has boasted in 
speech after speech that he maintains the continuity 
of the history handed down to him by his pre- 
decessors in the Kingdom of Prussia, For him this 
continuity in the autocratic will is a supreme virtue 
instead of a crime against the world. With him 



ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 169 

the policies which this will shapes in secret and 
the far-reaching preparations it makes for victory 
are of the very essence of righteousness instead of 
the quintessence of wickedness. It was one of 
the greatest of German students of political science, 
whom we have repeatedly quoted, who said that 
the perfecting of a national life must proceed, 
"provided of course that the principles of moral 
and political development shall not be opposed to 
the destiny of humanity." * Happy had it been 
for Germany if this qualification of statecraft had 
been observed by her rulers. But our whole point 
is that autocracy is simply incapable of permanently 
cherishing and obeying this healthful law of national 
life. 

The world cannot endure this system any 
longer. It has been a menace and a source of 
irritation among the free. It has made itself 
at last an intolerable disease in the body of hu- 
manity. Excision is the only remedy. That means, 
of course, that the defeat of Germany is now a 
moral obligation resting upon the free peoples of 
the world. It is true that the remedy cannot be 
made sure without a change in the German mind. 
This has been well put by Mr. A. F. Whyte, M. P. : 
"The goal itself, the destruction of German mil- 
itarism, can only be reached by the Germans them- 
selves! Any attempt to achieve it by force from 

1 Bluntschli, "The Theory of the State," p. 321. 



170 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

without can only end in riveting the system more 
firmly on the acquiescent backs of the German 
people. No great nation, even in dire defeat, will 
tolerate any alien attempt to set its house in order. 
The substitution of free government for the tyranny 
of militarism must be the deliberate and conscious 
act of a politically-awakened people: otherwise it 
cannot last." This is true, but it must be reckoned 
among the ethical gains in the war both that 
autocracy must be destroyed and that the German 
people themselves must learn to do it, with relief 
and joy to themselves, and the satisfaction of the 
conscience of mankind. 

Democracy has suffered because its deepest prin- 
ciple has only slowly emerged to the view of the 
world. Men have thought of its freedom from the 
tyranny and irresponsibility of autocratic rulers, 
whether one or many. Or they have thought of 
the noble responsibility which rests on each citizen 
to vote for the rulers and directors of the State. 
But that is not the point at which Christ began 
the history of democracy. There is one passage 
in Scripture where the two great completely hostile 
principles of government confront each other. It 
is that scene where two brothers, thinking of the 
new community in terms of a vulgar political 
party with its earthly and selfish prizes, beg for 
the positions of prominence "in Thy kingdom," 
Jesus succinctly describes the essence of rulership 



ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 171 

among the Gentiles. It means the exercise of 
authority, personal dominance of others, from 
which all false ambitions, rivalries, wars, arise. 
"Not so shall it be among you." The complete 
antithesis of this spirit is to fill the new community. 
The path of self-forgetting service is the way to 
glory. The humblest shall be exalted. Love that 
gives itself to secure the highest good of others 
leads to unsought thrones. "Even as the Son 
of man came," so shall His servants go into the 
wide world of wild self-seeking. "I am among you 
as he that serveth," are the words of Him who 
is their actual ruler there, even as He speaks and 
they obey. This is the taproot of democracy— the 
Cross of Him who served even so far as "to give 
his life a ransom for many." These are the acts, 
facts, and words which have brought us thus far 
even to the platform, with all its deficiencies, of the 
Labor program. 

How deeply the idea of service has penetrated 
the mind of the world is proved by many changes 
in our conception of the State. "Civil servants" 
is a term not of reproach but of honor. "Prime 
Minister" technically means a servant of the Crown, 
but actually it has become the title of the man 
who wields the greatest power in the greatest 
empire in the world, and that on sufferance of the 
people, for a time measured by their will, not by 
his, and for ends which must lie outside his personal 



i 7 2 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

enrichment or the aggrandizement of his person 
and family. The President of the United States 
is elected to a position of extraordinary power. 
He is the chief magistrate for four years, and then 
lays down the exacting burdens of his term of 
service and steps down to the level of an ordinary 
citizen with the right to one vote. 

This is Christianity at work. And democracy 
realizes its true essence when it aims at perfecting 
the spirit in which its citizens learn, not to be 
served, but each in his place to serve the common- 
weal. If the war is to make the world safe for 
democracy, it must become a world where the 
prizes of life are awarded with increasing public 
insight and moral conviction, not to those who 
seek most what "the rulers of the Gentiles" seek, 
but to those who have spent themselves most 
wisely and loyally upon the best service of their 
fellowmen. But democracy cannot quickly succeed, 
as long as public servants are supposed to rule a 
mass of business people, among whom selfishness is 
taken as the law of life and self-aggrandizement the 
proof of success. The ideal of service must pene- 
trate the whole body politic, and the governors who 
are elected to serve must be chosen by men who 
honestly seek in their individual callings not to be 
served, but to serve. 

4. Another proof that the ideals of Christian 
Ethics are taking hold even of the conduct of the 



ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 173 

war is to be found in the special efforts which are 
being made to raise as high as possible the standards 
of character among the soldiers of the Allies and 
of America. We may confine the subject to the 
armies of America, where four chief methods are 
being employed. In the first place prohibition is 
practically enforced on the army and on the civilians 
in their relation to the army, as a war measure. 
Any citizen who offers alcoholic drink to a man in 
uniform is liable to arrest and punishment. What 
this has done to strengthen the army and to save 
the nation from scenes of depravity cannot easily 
be computed. Provision is being increasingly made 
for the religious life of the men through the chap- 
lains, the Y M C A, and the various other church 
agencies. The response of the men to the religious 
appeal rightly made by the right means and men 
is often most remarkable. Ample provision is also 
made, chiefly through the Young Men's Christian 
Association, the Knights of Columbus, and the 
Young Men's Hebrew Association, for the instruc- 
tion of the men in the origin and purpose of the 
war and the spirit in which it must be worthily 
waged. Thus may be carried throughout the 
fighting forces the high-souled and moving words 
of the President: "Just because we fight without 
rancor and without selfish object, seeking nothing 
for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with 
all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, conduct 



174 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

our operations as belligerents without passion and 
ourselves observe with proud punctilio the prin- 
ciples of right and of fair play we profess to be 
fighting for." 

Finally there are carried into the camps and 
even to the fighting line, chiefly by means of the 
Y M C A and its parallel institutions named above, 
opportunities for recreation, rest, and education, 
some slight substitutes for and suggestion of the 
comforts and inspiration of club and home life 
in the home land. 

All these splendid efforts to moralize and spiritual- 
ize the meaning, method, and purposes of the 
World War are the undoubted fruit of that spirit 
which the whole world knows and names as Chris- 
tian. 

5. In the next place the insistent demand is 
being made by the heart, the mind, and the con- 
science of mankind that this World War shall end 
in the complete reconstruction of international 
relations. Not merely because of the agonies and 
losses wrought by the war, but because of the 
revelation which it has given to us all of the causes 
from which war springs and their ethical disgrace, 
the human mind has set itself to the mightiest task 
known to history. This is nothing less than laying 
the secure foundations of a united humanity. 
Bluntschli, in the work so often cited, describes 
the "tendencies towards a common organization of 



ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 175 

humanity. " 2 He said, it is true, that "the Aryan 
race feels itself called to manage the world," but 
that was more than forty years ago. Today he 
would not express it exactly so. Then follows this 
passage, which because of its authorship by a Ger- 
man who was yet undeflected from correct think- 
ing by the influence of the newly-born Empire, is 
the more significant: "We have not yet got so far: 
at the present day it is not so much will and power 
that are wanting as spiritual maturity. The mem- 
bers of the European family of nations know their 
superiority over other nations well enough, but 
they have not yet come to a clear understanding 
among themselves and about themselves. A definite 
result is not possible until the enlightening word 
of knowledge has been uttered about this and about 
^the nature of humanity, and until the nations are 
ready to hear it. Till then, the universal empire 
will be an idea after which many strive, which none 
can fulfil. But as an idea of the future the general 
theory of the State cannot overlook it. Only in 
the universal empire will the true human State 
be revealed, and in it international law will attain 
a higher form and an assured existence. To the 
universal empire the particular States are related, 
as the nations to humanity. Particular States are 
members of the universal empire and attain in it 
their completion and their full satisfaction. The 
» "The Theory of the'State," p. 31. 



176 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

purpose of the universal State is not to break up 
particular states and oppress nations, but better 
to secure the peace of the former and the freedom 
of the latter." 3 

It was in the same general period of unfettered 
German life that Dorner, the great theologian, in 
his famous work, "Christian Ethics," maintained, 
"that the ends for which the State exists cannot 
be reached by means of legal institutions which 
shall embrace the whole human race, that is, by 
one universal State, but can only be realized in a 
multiplicity of States, each possessing its own 
sovereign power." 4 But this seems to be a de- 
cision due to purely verbal or technical considera- 
tions, for on a later page he seems to contradict it 
in substance, though not in form. "Those be- 
ginnings of international law which we see," he 
says, "make it possible for Christian nations to 
hope that one day Christian princes and Christian 
peoples will unite to form a high Areopagus, to 
which they will commit the task of settling their 
differences with each other, so that Christian blood 
will no longer have to be shed by Christian men." 5 
But Treitschke was teaching at Berlin at the same 
time as Dorner. And Treitschke won. 6 

3 "The Theory of the State," pp. 31, 32. 

4 Dorner, "Christian Ethics." Trans., p. 556. 

5 Ibid., pp. 579, 580. 

6 From Treitschke's victory arose the Kaiser's speeches, von 
Bernhardi's book, et id genus omne — and Belgium. 



ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 177 

Nevertheless some progress was made even be- 
fore the war in the direction of the World-State. 
Of this the years prolific of peace propaganda 
were witness. The Hague Conventions and Mr. 
Carnegie's Peace Palace, the very alignment of 
Europe in opposing leagues of great nations, and 
the formation of many associations to promote 
international understanding and concert of mind, 
were all forces acting in that general direction. 

But the World War is the mightiest force. Al- 
ready, in the intimate cooperation of the enemies 
of Germany, in their mutual good will, in their 
willingness to sacrifice for each other as no nation 
ever did before for another nation, in the mingling 
of the blood of their sons on the fields of France 
and Flanders, in the concentration of an inter- 
national will upon the victory of nations that are 
equal brothers, free from each other's domination, 
but in holy bonds to each other's succour, we see 
far more than mere prophecies or faint beginnings 
of the universal State. The history of it has definitely 
begun. The leading nations of the world are co- 
operating to establish it. The overthrow of German 
militarism will not only sweep away the supreme 
obstacle, but will compel the more rapid fulfilment 
of the age-long dream of seers and saints. The 
League of Nations has already arisen, a new era 
in the moral development of humanity. 

6. Another sphere in which the war has hastened 



178 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

ethical progress must be referred to less at length 
than its importance demands. The war has com- 
pelled the democratic powers to reconstruct their 
industrial life. Indeed, it is the entire fabric of 
society that is being rapidly changed. Two of 
the most dignified, luminous, and far-reaching 
documents produced in the war are "Labor and 
the New Social Order," adopted by the British 
Labour Party, and "Labor War Aims,'* the agree- 
ment adopted by the Inter-Allied Labor and Social 
Conference in London, February, 1918. 7 

In these momentous utterances we discover the 
force and breadth of the changes which have come 
like a tidal wave upon the slowly unfolding internal 
history of the allied nations. The former docu- 
ment does not profess any abstract socialist pro- 
gram, nor do its proposals involve the doctrine of 
communism. Its fundamental principles are three- 
fold: first, every worker by hand or brain must 
receive the full value of his labor, and the determina- 
tion of this must not be left to the decision of any 
class of employers; second, the Government must 
take full control and retain the initiative as to 
education, adjustment of wages to changing eco- 
nomic conditions, etc.; third, the immediate na- 
tionalization of land, railways, mines, and the 
production of electrical power, must be arranged. 

7 Both documents are published, the former in draft form, by 

fhe New Republic, New York. 



ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 179 

The fulcrum on which the powerful lever of the 
Labor Party rests is the fact that all these features 
of the program are already in operation more or 
less completely, by stress of the war. 

Two quotations will suffice to give us a sense 
of the ethical idealism and the intense earnestness 
which inform this powerful declaration of principle: 
"If we repudiate, on the one hand, the imperialism 
that seeks to dominate other races, or to impose 
our own will on other parts of the British Empire, 
so we disclaim equally any conception of a selfish 
and insular 'non-interventionism,' unregarding of 
our special obligations to our fellow-citizens over- 
seas; of the corporate duties of one nation to another; 
of the moral claims upon us of the non-adult races, 
and of our own indebtedness to the world of which 
we are part." And again, "Especially in all the 
complexities of politics, in the still undeveloped 
science of society, the Labor party stands for in- 
creased study, for the scientific investigation of each 
succeeding problem, for the deliberate organization 
of research, and for a much more rapid dissemination 
among the whole people of all the science that 
exists. And it is perhaps specially the Labor party 
that has the duty of placing this advancement of 
science in the forefront of its political program. . . . 
But no Labor party can hope to maintain its position 
unless its proposals are, in fact, the outcome of the 
best political science of its time; or to fulfil its 



180 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

purpose unless that science is continually wresting 
new fields from human ignorance. Hence, although 
the purpose of the Labor party must, by the law 
of its being, remain for all time unchanged, its 
policy and its program will, we hope, undergo a 
perpetual development, as knowledge grows, and 
as new phases of the social problem present them- 
selves, in a continually finer adjustment of our 
measures to our ends. If law is the mother of 
freedom, science, to the Labor party, must be the 
parent of law." 

Assuredly the fruits of the great war will not 
be measured merely in terms of tears and blood. 
There is a spirit in man, there is a moral energy at 
work even amid sin, suffering, and death, ghastly 
as these may be, which is securing many a victory 
for the Sermon on the Mount. 

7. Amongst important moral values which result 
from the war we must reckon those which are 
being discovered and realized among the voluntary 
services rendered in a multitude of ways by the 
general populations, especially of Great Britain 
and America. These countries had become habit- 
uated to the ways of peace, their attention had 
been fastened upon the problems of commerce and 
the development of the national life in the lines 
of material prosperity, luxury, and aesthetic in- 
terests. There can be no doubt that a great deal 
too much attention was given exclusively to sport 



ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 181 

and pleasure of all kinds. These interests have, of 
course, their value. The value is vital and im- 
measurable if they are subordinate to the tension 
of a life spent upon high aims and hard endeavors. 
They become diseases just at the point where they 
become the ends of life, the chief interests of the 
heart and mind of large sections of the population. 
Suddenly the war broke upon us, and a moral 
transformation as extensive as it has been sudden 
took possession of the inhabitants of these lands. 

In the first place, we must take account of the 
devotion of the manhood of these peoples to the 
active task of war. Volunteers must be counted 
not by hundreds of thousands, but by millions, 
men who gave up all that they might get to the 
fighting lines. In the vast majority of cases prob- 
ably the impulse was not that of mere youthful 
adventure. There was something of moral idealism, 
something of passionate patriotism, something of 
profound conviction, which underlay and gave 
direction and force to the decision and spirit of 
the volunteers. When conscription came it found 
men, who for innumerable reasons had not volun- 
teered, ready to answer the call of their country, 
and many of the noblest soldiers and the best 
fighters have been found among the ranks of drafted 
men. 

In the second place, the population as a whole 
found its energies drawn upon to carry on many 



i82 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

forms of service without which the armies could not 
be supported at the front. In America already thou- 
sands of men and women have given up positions 
of importance and lives of ease to serve long hours 
in unaccustomed places under restricted conditions, 
in order to assist the organizations on which are 
based the training and movement and fighting 
success of the armies. The world knows how lavish 
has been this sacrificial spirit in Great Britain and 
France. 

In the third place, there fell upon the hearts 
of these countries the demand for service and for 
money required in many ways not strictly mil- 
itary, but that bore upon the succor of the wounded, 
the comfort of prisoners, the support of families 
left destitute in devastated lands, the conduct of 
the instrumentalities of education and religion in 
the camps and even in the trenches, the aid re- 
quired by many wives and children whose sup- 
porters had been taken to war. In these and other 
ways, especially as far as America is concerned, 
through the wonderful organization of the Red 
Cross, the moral enthusiasm of the people has been 
roused, and multitudes have given large sums whose 
charities hitherto were mere driblets. Large numbers 
who toiled only for their own pleasure are now toil- 
ing long hours every day for the blessing of others. 

Among the most remarkable evidences of devo- 
tion, readiness for sacrifice, intelligent cooperation, 



ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 183 

we must name the response made by the citizens 
of America to the demands of the Department 
of Food Administration. "Hooverizing" is one of 
those humorous terms by which men have de- 
lighted to express a very serious situation. Few 
more impressive testimonies to the soundness of a 
national heart could be found than the response 
made by the American people to the call of Mr. 
Hoover that they should deny themselves in matters 
of food and drink for the support of the Allies and 
the winning of the war. Germany cannot under- 
stand how a people could ration themselves. Any 
nation accustomed to wait only for the directions 
of its rulers under penalty of law has no concep- 
tion of how a people can take the mere proclamation 
of a need as a command that must be obeyed. 
Mr. Hoover has announced that hundreds of mil- 
lions of bushels of this, hundreds of thousands of 
pounds of that, hundreds of thousands of measures 
of something else have been saved during the 
winter of 191 7-1 8 by the American people. They 
have taken these things from their tables that 
they might find their way to the tables of Great 
Britain and France. It was done voluntarily, 
gladly, not as a sacrifice, but as a joyous duty. 
It cannot be said, alas, that all have acted in this 
way; too large are the classes of people whose minds 
are too idle and hearts too selfish for such an act. 
But the fact stands that Mr. Hoover is himself 



i8 4 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

amazed at the nation-wide extent of this generous 
response to his guidance and his inspiration. 

Among the most cheering and hopeful features 
of the situation is the witness borne by the churches 
that enthusiasm for Christian work at home and 
abroad has not abated but has been rather intensi- 
fied during the war. It seems strange that when 
nations are giving so much in taxation and benevo- 
lent gifts for war causes directly, they should have 
increased their contributions to the work of foreign 
missions. It seems as if the imagination had been 
widened, the spiritual insight of men had been 
deepened, the sense of responsibility had become 
more grave and more compelling. They who have 
been doing most and making the gravest sacrifices 
for the war itself are those who have enlarged their 
wonted support of the great cause of the Gospel. 

In the last place, we must note a deeper sense 
of religious need. It is true that in some of the 
lands that have been longer at war people speak 
of a lessening interest in religion. This can only 
be on the surface. What we find everywhere is 
that men and women are open to religious thought 
and religious appeal whose lives lay beyond this 
vision in past days. The spectacle of a world wreck- 
ing itself, of multitudes of lives carried off simul- 
taneously into the unseen, of brutality and sor- 
row, sacrifice and sin, the experience of bereavement, 
of homes broken forever, of hearts made lonely 



ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 185 

for the rest of their lives — these things are of spiritual 
import, they have drawn people together in deeper 
sympathy who had no ties and no contacts before. 
They have spread through the community a cer- 
tain seriousness and tenderness which make the 
determination of their wills the more strong and 
the picture of a Christian nation at war more 
sublime. 

He would be mad who says that it is worth 
being at war to win these results; but he would be 
equally untrue to the facts who ignores these bless- 
ings of the spirit which God in His mercy is drawing 
out of human hearts, even in the midst of the 
tragedy which seems to wreck their lives. 

8. On a survey of the course of argument which 
we have pursued, it appears that we ought to 
conclude by a joyous celebration of the Victory 
of the Sermon on the Mount! This startling result 
is not so much of a paradox as it seems. True, 
we began by considering the case of those who 
set the World War and the teaching of Jesus Christ 
in complete hostility, as wholes which mutually 
exclude one another. It seemed as if the only 
right thing to say must be this: Whatever war is, 
it excludes the Spirit of Christ, and, Whatever 
the Spirit of Christ is, it cannot be found in war- 
fare. To many minds that is self-evident. 

But in the course of our argument several things 
have become clear which not only make us less 



186 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

certain of that position, but force us to see the 
nature and history of war and the mind of Christ 
in deeper historical and essential relations with 
one another. For example, it has assuredly become 
clear that war can be, on the part of a people like 
the Belgians defending their existence, a pure effort 
(as pure as human effort could ever be) to maintain 
moral order, to repress wrongdoing, and to do it 
by the exercise of force. Now that effort is a divine 
thing. God Himself makes it. Jesus Christ made 
it, even if only symbolically, in cleansing the Temple. 
Further, we have seen reason to believe that moral- 
ity needs always a physical basis for its manifesta- 
tion, just as life needs it if life is to be something 
real for us in our world of experiences. On the other 
hand, the Spirit of Jesus, which was exhibited in 
act as well as speech, and whose action is as far 
above our reach apparently as the Sermon on the 
Mount, has no way of being manifested by us at 
all except it be in our physical and social life. It 
is not by taking us out of the world, but by keeping 
us from the evil that His Spirit has its way with us. 
What we say and do where we are, as we are, in 
the midst of our conscious weakness and blindness, 
that is our life; and exactly there, and only there, 
is the Spirit of Christ to be found in us, and to have 
its way with us. The Sermon on the Mount from 
first to last is addressed to men and women who 
must hear it, grasp it, obey it, in the midst of this 



ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 187 

world and all its claims and forces of nature. As 
married, as in business, as under government, as 
exercising government, as workman at a carpenter's 
bench or banker putting his money out at interest, 
as teacher, traveler, scholar, soldier, the words of 
Jesus enter a man's heart and find him where he is. 

Now that means that the Sermon on the Mount 
is not a mere ideal hung in the sky to allure, baffle, 
condemn the human soul. Many elude its difficult 
problems by that notion of it, and so lose all its 
thrilling, compulsory energy. They can have no 
vision of the measureless sway which it has exer- 
cised and exercises today over the conscience and 
the conduct of man. 

Therefore I venture the assertion that nowhere 
has the Sermon on the Mount, the embodiment 
in words of the Spirit of Christ, exercised more 
visible and amazing power than in the matter of 
war. If today the world is horrified, aghast, at 
what the will to war can do, it is because all its 
meaning, methods, and results are subjected to 
the standard of His Spirit. That will must be 
broken and cast as a disgraceful thing into the 
past. But it is being broken by the might of the 
command, Love your enemies. Yet the strange 
thing is that the triumph of that command at this 
point cannot be and is not being secured by pacifists. 
It is being secured by the gradual discovery, an 
age-long process, that war is absolutely wrong on 



188 CHRISTIAN ETHICS IN THE WAR 

the side of the self-seeking and criminal aggressor, 
and absolutely right on the part of the defender. 

As the individual is protected from crime not 
by willingness on his part to submit to assault 
and robbery, but by yielding the original right 
of self-defence to the State, so the nations of the 
world are learning in and through the World War 
that security against aggression is to be won not 
by a duel between the two, but by yielding the 
act of justice up to the league of nations. So were 
the warring dukedoms of medieval France brought 
into the harmonious life of a nation. So were the 
kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, and free cities 
of Germany welded into the unity of the German 
Empire. These all had been rival States. When 
they yielded their international rights to a higher 
power, they ceased to war with one another and 
learned even amid continued rivalries and jealousies 
to sacrifice themselves for the whole. And that is 
love among enemies! The warring nations and 
empires of the whole world surely must have learned 
through the fearful penalties of a world war to 
yield up part of their freedom of international 
action. When they have slowly and painfully 
mastered the bewildering problems which are in- 
volved, they will establish that universal State 
of which ancient prophets and modern poets have 
dreamed, which statesmen and militarists, philos- 
ophers and preachers of the Gospel have combined 



ETHICAL GAINS IN THE WAR 189 

in their several ways to produce. Not till then 
can we have the fulfilment of the divine promise 
that there shall be "peace on the earth among 
men of good will." 

That is why this war, when carried by the Allies 
and America to the right issue, will be another 
proof of the divine power of the Sermon on the 
Mount. 



INDEX 



Abstract ideas, 31"., 54, 69. 
Armenians, 48. 
Autocracy, 1671". 

Bang, Dr. J. P., 6if., 68. 

Barclay, 83, 90. 

Belgium, 45, 94, 124, 132, 139, 

149, 150, 157, 162. 
Bernhardi, von, 65-68, 70, 120, 

126. 
Beyens, Baron de, 149. 
Bluntschli, 24, 541"., 63, 169, I74f. 
Bosanquet, 241". 
British Empire, 34. 

Cheradame, Andre, 125. 

Christ (Jesus) and the Church, 
!3> 75ff« Cross and Resurrec- 
tion, 94-96. Moral order, 
i85ff. Roman Government, 
83?., 88. Sermon on Mount, 
86ff. The State, 761"., 8 iff. 

Church, The, 121".; founding of, 
76; moral influence of, 100- 
103, H2ff. ; and sacrifice, 49f.; 
and the State, 76ff.; (Christ), 
79, 99 (Paul); and war, 81, 
147. 

"Conquest and Kultur,"i27,l38. 

Creichton, Mrs., 94. 

Darwinism and War, 68. 
Democracy, 167, 170-172. 
Dorner, 20, 21, 133, 176. 

France, 162. 

Friends, Society of (Quakers), 

7ff., 27. 
Frymann, D., 137. 

Geibel, E. von, 62. 
George, Lloyd, 163. 
Gerard, J. W., 154. 
German character, 596°., 66f., 
166; mind, 53f., 129. 



German Empire, 33, 46. 

German Government, defects 
of, 58ff.; efficiency of, 56; and 
Hague Convention, I27f.; in- 
ternational law, 1 3 3 f . ; men- 
ace to the world, 1401"., 157; 
military force, as, 57, 66f., 
177; policy of devastation, 
I35ff.; of ruthless war, 131- 
135; possible change in, 169/.; 
and treaties, 139; self-justifi- 
cation of, 16 if. 

Germany, population of, 63f.; 
prayer for, I09f.; responsibil- 
ity of, for the war, H9ff., 
14 if. 

Great Britain, declaration of 
war by, 149-15 1, 163; unpre- 
paredness of, 148. 

Grey, Sir Edward, 149. 

Harden, M., 123. 

Hate and Fear, io7f. 

Hegel, 20, 54f. 

Herrmann, W., 39. 

Hocking, W. E., 106, no, 115. 

Hodgkin, T., 93 f. 

Hoover, Herbert, 183. 

Horton, R. F., 9of. 

Individual, responsibilities of 
the, 27. 

Kaiser (Emperor), The, 57, 63, 
65, i2off., 130, 162, 168L, 176. 

Labor party, program of, I79ff. 

Lange, Fr., 137. 

Liberty, Stephen, 8in. 

Lichnowsky, Prince, 149. 

Love, of enemies, 896°.; omnip- 
otence of, I04ff.; and prayer, 
io8ff. 

Luxemburg, 47, 48, 96. 



191 



192 



INDEX 



Mackenzie, John, illustration 

from life of, 11 4- 117. 
Maurice, F. D., 44. 
Mexico, 154. 
Murray, Sir G., 4. 

Nippold, G., 126. 

Pacifism, Theory of, 7-12. 

Patriotism, 30. 

Paul, the Apostle, his doctrine 

of the State, g6ff.; Roman 

citizen, 98. 
Potsdam, Council at, 123. 
Prussia, 66, 120. 

Quakers (see Society of Friends). 

Reconstruction, social and in- 
dustrial, I77ff. 

Regulus, sacrifice of, 95f. 

Religion and the State, 20, 29, 
48. 

Russia, 139, 149, 162. 

Sermon on the Mount, The, 
86fF.; literal application of, 
92f.; meaning of, 9 iff.; in- 
fluence of, 103; victory of, 
180, i8sff. 



State, The, definition of, 17-20; 
and defensive war, 4 iff., 47ff.; 
divine institution, 2of.; and 
force, 23 ff.; forms of, 33f.; 
and individual, 26ff.; inter- 
national morality, 18, 3off., 
35, 4of.; object of, 22f., s6f.; 
as "power," 55, 65ff.; and 
sacrifice, 48ff., 946?".; as "will," 
54; universal? I74ff., i88f. 

Treitschke, 176. 
Troeltsch, E., 7 if. 
Turkey, 48. 

United States, The, and the 
War, 145^, 155-158, 167. 

Votaw, C. W., 86. 

Wagner, K., 138. 

War, correct statement of prob- 
lem, 1-5; as function of the 
State, 12, 47f., 67 ff.; (Ger- 
man view), 128; as moral 
obligation, I57f.; moralizing 
of, i64ff.; results of German 
theory of, 1298". 

Whyte, A. F., 169. 

Wilson, President Woodrow, 
142, 151-156, i63f., 168, 173. 



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